The Book of Wingless: Aeternum Vale, Part One
AU. After John Watson lost his Guardian Angel in Afghanistan, it left him alone in a world that doesn't look favourably upon the Severed. After meeting the enigmatic Sherlock Holmes, John is forced to question everything he thought he knew about the country he fought to protect, and just what it means to be Wingless.
A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
~William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) - Rebirth of ideas and spirit: of new beginnings.
He knew he was dreaming because although he could see his fellow soldiers dying around him, dropping one after the other as gunfire ripped through their group, he stood untouched in the centre, feet planted in the sand and gun gripped tightly in his hands. He knew it was a dream because although the sun glared harshly into his eyes, hiding the enemy behind its glare, he couldn’t feel the blistering heat that he remembered. Although he could see the dirt kicked up by running feet and stray bullets, fancied he could almost taste the grit drying his mouth and throat to a parched expense, he couldn’t feel the burn of the sun-warmed earth beneath his boots.
He knew that the blood he could smell was memory only, that he wasn’t really back in the war, but as he stumbled back, trying to reach cover, the knowledge seemed distant, unimportant. He swung his gun up, aimed, shook sweat out of his eyes, and carefully spotted his target.
He felt the warmth of the metal in his hands, as it almost moved itself, aimed itself even though he was blinded by the sun, and fired, again and again. Every shot was accompanied by a cry or someone falling. Shooting blindly, he moved swiftly through the hordes of dying men, shooting over and over and hitting his target every time. A fierce, gleeful tremor of satisfaction ran through him with every shot, even as he felt their shock and pain shiver across his skin. Warring abilities of death and healing, never meaning to coexist.
Just as he took aim once more at a man who had two of his companions in his sight, he felt someone slam into him, knocking him to the ground and his gun out of hands. As soon as the gun left his fingers, he felt a hollow emptiness fill him, as though he’d lost something important. He hit the ground and retched, struggling to face the one who’d struck him.
He turned and it was his father, smiling smugly at him, gun held in large, steady hands that he knew well, hands that knew as well as his own how to both hurt and heal. Words escaped him, and he stared numbly at his old man who laughed, and squeezed the trigger.
Remembering the wave of shock that radiated through his shoulder along with the bullet was never easy, the way he’d been tossed into the dirt, not so much as by the impact, but by the pain, screaming. Remembering lying, dying, surrounded by those he served with, but more alone than ever, bleeding out into the dirt. Thinking to himself that the red cross on his arm hadn’t even helped in the end, he would die out here along with his patients.
Worst of all, was the tearing agony in his soul as it split in two, the bullet ripping through muscle and bone, shadowed by the way it had torn his Guardian away from him.
He reached for his gun, held it loosely in his hand as he began to lose consciousness, but its comforting warmth was no longer there, now just a cold hunk of murderous metal. And he had never been as alone as he had been that day.
As alone as he was still.
John Watson jerked awake, pain slicing through his shoulder, heart thumping dully. He lay in his bed, panting, before slowly sitting, looking about warily.
The dream was a constant reminder of what he’d lost, as though he needed reminding. The ache was less today, but still there, a numbing emptiness echoed by his surroundings.
He glanced around at the sparse flat he’d lived in since his discharge, clean and free of anything personal. He hated the empty white walls, the sharp lines, and coldness of the apartment, even as he felt it accurately summed up who he was these days.
Most of all, he hated the cane, taunting him from its place propped against the desk. Hated how it mocked him with his own disability. Hated the reliance on it, when he’d never relied on anything before.
He shook the last vestiges of the dream away, standing stiffly and limping to the desk. Dawn was beginning to creep through his curtains; he’d spent the whole night tossing and turning. The exhaustion was nothing new, he knew what he’d see if he glanced in the mirror. An old and broken man, a doctor who killed, and a soldier who limped. Eyes haunted and hollowed by permanent purple shadows, face lined with the sins of his past.
Sliding the drawer open, he reached for his laptop, hand slowing over the butt of his handgun, lying where he’d shoved it months ago upon moving in. He couldn’t bear the feel of it anymore, the coldness of the metal where before touching it had been like the touch of a friend’s hand, familiar and welcoming. He remembered the days when the gun had truly been an extension of himself, filled with a fragment of his splintered soul, fierce and brave.
The gun was a mockery of himself that he’d caused. Its inanimateness, more than the empty flat or the limp, spoke of the man John Watson had become, nothing more than a shade of what he’d once been. Dim, cold metal, where once there had been vibrancy and life.
John grabbed his laptop and slammed the drawer shut, hiding the gun from view. He opened it and stared at the blank space, waited in vain for the words to come.
“How’s your blog going?” she asks him cheerily. He thinks for a moment about telling her he knows she’s faking the concern, but he can’t quite find the energy to say the words.
“Yeah, good,” he says, his smile brittle. He coughs slightly, shifting. He could block her emotions, or he used to be able to. It’s a lot harder now that most of his energy seems devoted to simply getting up every morning. He settles for ignoring the itch or boredom and sympathy he can feel radiating off her. “Very good.”
“You haven’t written a word, have you?” The boredom shifts, the itch becoming a pinch of frustration, and John sinks slightly, trying to shield against it. It’s harder without another source to draw power from, his own well is decidedly low. He watches her scribble on her pad, and frowns.
“You just wrote, ‘still has trust issues’,” he says, and she looks at him, startled. He knows she’d read the blog, he can taste it when she lies. As annoying as his empathy skills are, they can also be decidedly useful. The ability he’d been born with, his one true skill. The only skill he still hid from everyone.
And besides, he wouldn’t even need to be an Empath to know she planned to read every word he wrote. He was hardly forthcoming in their meetings. She wasn’t a very good therapist, he mused. But he gave her points for effort.
“And you read my writing upside-down.” He hadn’t. But she didn’t need to know that. “You see what I mean. John, you’re a soldier. And it’s going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life and... what you’ve lost. Writing a blog, everything that happens to you, will honestly help you.”
She thinks that if he’s patient, a new Guardian would make itself known to him eventually. He knows her attitude towards his position well. She won’t believe he’s Wingless because she looks at him and sees a still functional man.
He looks at himself and sees someone waiting for the end.
John sits rigid in the chair, staring disbelievingly at her. He knew as well as anyone that there were only so many chances you got, so many Angels allotted to you. And his fierce protector of the war, he’d been John’s third.
Most people didn’t even get a third. He knew he should count himself ridiculously lucky to have had that chance, but mostly he just felt heartsore. It wasn’t like a physical pain, this space where his Angel should be. It was a constant hollow in his chest, the echoes of his heartbeats endlessly trapped within, demanding he rectify this wrongness, as they rebounded and grew in the emptiness.
Incredibly, she was still talking. “Until you let your old Guardian go, the new one hasn’t got space to grow and form.”
John rather felt there was more than enough space, with the holes his former Guardians had left in his soul.
He knew that the words she was chattering were empty words. His files she had spread in front of her had almost everything about him in there, his childhood, his alcoholic father, his Guardians so far, but in the space left aside for magical talents, it had been left blank.
His first Angel had urged him silently to keep his empathy a secret, and he’d done so. It had been weak enough back then that his Father’s murderous rages had only been a discomfort, his Mother’s grief easily brushed aside and that people he didn’t know were quiet and blank to him.
His second Angel had strengthened his talent, grown and shaped it. Her power had amplified his. She had taught him how to taste emotions in the air, how to tell them apart from the sensations on his skin, to look at people out of the corner of his eye and see the pale flashes of their Angels beside them. A Healing and Helping Guardian, the most esteemed of the five Guardian classes. She had taught him to use his empathy to mend what was broken, to put together not only shattered bodies, but the scars on people’s minds as well.
Empath skills were firmly in the Communication and Mindsight class, and it was a class viewed mostly with suspicion and distrust. Much better to be known as a Healer and Helper.
He’d never seen an Angel clearly, only vague shapes and colours, and he could only imagine what form his own had taken. But he could feel the way his therapist’s emotions bounced off of her Angel, pity and slight boredom, with a hint of disgust at the possibility he was severed completely.
Those without Angels didn’t last long. Sunderings, the loss of a former Angel to make way for a new one, were a natural fact of life. The Guardian passed on, leaving a trace of taught abilities behind, a patchwork of skills unique to every person. But sometimes the Sundering was more permanent, more a Severing, and those were the broken, the hopeless, the mad.
If he was Severed, he wasn’t fit company, and John could feel the way her disgust tainted the rest of her emotions with a sickly taste, like bile in the back of his throat. It made his skin feel oily, and he fought the desire to wipe his hands clean.
He forced himself to look her in the eye as she continued to chatter about adjusting to civilian life, already deciding that his first adaption would be never to return to therapy. “Nothing happens to me.”
OCTOBER 12TH
His Angel screamed, pain lancing through him as the Beast threw it to the floor.
The hand holding the pill shook as he felt the claws of the Beast rake along his Guardian, a touch he’d never experienced. The pain felt distant, numbed.
The screams faded to a hum in the background as he raised the pill to his lips, light from the windows glittering, deaf to the agonised howls of his Protector.
The pill touched his lips.
Swallow.
Pain. Crumpled to the floor.
His Angel went first, a shower of gold visible only to him.
His turn.
NOVEMBER 26TH
Two boys sprinting up the street, laughing in the rain. Invisible to them, their Angels bounded behind, hounds with backs strangely humped from mantled wings, snapping playfully at one another.
One runs back, leaving a friend willing to share an umbrella.
Everything to live for.
Before he dies, the boy thinks he can hear the frantic barking of a dog struggling to reach its owner.
JANUARY 27TH
He watches impassively as she sobs and fights. She’s taken the longest to subdue out of all of them, but it’s easy eventually. Her Angel is old, slow. Soft from a life of ease, ill-suited to protection. Worthless.
It’s not worth it in the end, the fight. They all struggle, they all cry, they all wail. And then, they all die.
Once his Beast has hers pinned, it’s all over.
He doesn’t think this will ever lose its fun. He smiles as she slips the pill into her mouth, and the old Guardian dissolves into a shower of sparks.
The body of Beth Davenport, Junior Minister for Transport, was found late last night on a building site in Greater London.
He hates this. Hates the flashing cameras, the barked questions, the insatiable curiosity of the press. The callousness of it all, bottling a senseless death down into easily digested headlines.
Most of all, he hates being surrounded by so many people, not the easy good/bad kinds he’s used to, but the overwhelming press of grey and grey moralities round him.
He scans the crowd of reporters, trying to block his power from use. Even blocked, stuff filters through. He glances at a person, and in a moment, can sense their intentions.
It’s weak, and depends on his own assumptions about a person. But in a crowd like this, next to useless, bombarded with intentions and guilt and perversions.
It’s not like what... he... does. Not at all. Greg’s is a parlour trick, a little magic he can call up when needed. What he does, that’s truly useful. At best, Greg’s can tell him if someone is evil or good, and there’s plenty of middle ground that doesn’t cover.
His eyes flicker round the crowd, shutting out Sally’s voice, intoning about the apparent suicides (and aren’t they a puzzle?), trying to separate one person from another. He knows how out of place he looks in front of a crowd, awkward and fidgety. He can feel his Guardian, warm against his chest, curled round his warrant card in his breast pocket. His decoy ID is at his hip, after an unpleasant experience with an acquaintance attempting to steal the ID his Guardian perches on, he’d worn two as a precaution. It gives him some comfort, even though he knows it’s probably snoozing in there. The only time it ever truly feels awake and alive these days is when he’s on a case, keen-eyed and hungry.
“Detective Inspector Lestrade will take questions now.”
His name snaps him back to attention. The drone of chatter becomes a violent buzz, aimed at him. Time to bark for the crowd, then.
“Detective Inspector, how can suicides be linked?” A man with long hair, essentially an honest man, but there’s a smoky wisp round him. A hint of deception in his past, lies that scarred him. A promise of betrayal in his future.
The work of a moment, to see this and push it away. Eyes averted, to avoid seeing all the poor man’s dirty laundry. “Well, they all took the same poison,” he says, professional, cool. “They were all found in places they had no reason to be.” Glancing up, his eyes meet a man’s in the crowd, a flicker of violence. The bad always overshadowed the good, a kind word to a workmate, money donated to a cause.
The worst thing about his power, the inability to act on any of the information he gains from it. So that man may have stuck his wife as some point in the past, it could be twenty years ago now, or simply the day before. Perhaps even a week from now, it was often impossible to tell the future from the past. Useless, vague. He looks down again, pretending to glance at his notes. “None of them had shown any prior indication-“
“But you can’t have serial suicides.”
Lestrade frowns, irritated with the interruption. “Well, apparently you can.” Sally kicks him under the desk, shaking her head slightly. She knows him, knows how much the press bother him. Vultures. He avoids smiling, unwilling to goad her.
The man from before, who may or may not have struck his wife at some point. “These three people, there’s nothing that links them?”
“There’s no link we’ve found yet.” Carefully chosen words. “But, we’re looking for it - there has to be one.”
The room suddenly fills with the buzz and chime of dozens of ringtones, his and Sally’s included. Startled glance at his phone, and suddenly he can feel his Guardian, awake and humming with excitement, the taste of the chase already in his mouth. Outwardly, his facial expression doesn’t change.
Wrong!
He can hear Sally trying to calm the crowd, the reporters’ questioning the text, and he sighs slightly. She’s going to be unbearable to work with now that he’s shown an interest, and isn’t it about time.
“If they’re suicides, what are you investigating?”
Him again. “As I say, these suicides are clearly linked. It’s an unusual situation. We’ve got our best people investigating.”
The chatter of phones again, and how does he do that? Lestrade allows himself to feel mildly impressed, although he schools his expression into one of slight frustration. Wouldn’t do to let Sally see him smile at... well, these antics.
Wrong!
“Is there any chance that these are murders?” A woman this time, and Lestrade carefully blocks any of her from slipping through his shield. Now that his Angel is awake and buzzing, it’s easier to use his strength as a shield. “And if they are, is this the work of a serial killer?”
Damn. Those two words no copper likes to hear. The two words that mean late nights with no sleep, bad coffee, and mass hysteria. Choosing words carefully again, Sally silent at his side, fuming over the texts. “I know that you like writing about these, but these do appear to be suicides. We know the difference. The poison was clearly self-administered. “
“Yes, but if they are murders, how do people keep themselves safe?”
His patience slips away, with a thrum of anger from his Angel. “Well, don’t commit suicide,” he snaps, silencing her. They were wasting time here, they could be out tracking real criminals, doing real police work! Not throwing bones to this mob of hounds.
A mutter from Sally reminding him of their tenuous position in the eyes of the public. Damage control. “Obviously, this is a frightening time for people, but all anyone has to do is exercise reasonable precautions. We are all as safe as we want to be.”
A third time. Wrong!
This time his is different. He eyes it cautiously, an air of resignation. You know where to find me. SH
He tries to hide the excitement from Sally as he thanks them drily and leaps up, shoving his phone into his pocket as he goes.
Sally chased him. “You’ve got to stop him doing that, he’s making us look like idiots.” Sally is a good copper, loyal and firm, and he doesn’t need his gift to tell him that. But she needs to get off his case about their... agreement.
“If you can tell me how he does it, I’ll stop him.” A lie. They need him.
And they’re not the only ones, he thinks, a silent agreement hummed from his pocket.
Part Two
A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
~William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) - Rebirth of ideas and spirit: of new beginnings.
He knew he was dreaming because although he could see his fellow soldiers dying around him, dropping one after the other as gunfire ripped through their group, he stood untouched in the centre, feet planted in the sand and gun gripped tightly in his hands. He knew it was a dream because although the sun glared harshly into his eyes, hiding the enemy behind its glare, he couldn’t feel the blistering heat that he remembered. Although he could see the dirt kicked up by running feet and stray bullets, fancied he could almost taste the grit drying his mouth and throat to a parched expense, he couldn’t feel the burn of the sun-warmed earth beneath his boots.
He knew that the blood he could smell was memory only, that he wasn’t really back in the war, but as he stumbled back, trying to reach cover, the knowledge seemed distant, unimportant. He swung his gun up, aimed, shook sweat out of his eyes, and carefully spotted his target.
He felt the warmth of the metal in his hands, as it almost moved itself, aimed itself even though he was blinded by the sun, and fired, again and again. Every shot was accompanied by a cry or someone falling. Shooting blindly, he moved swiftly through the hordes of dying men, shooting over and over and hitting his target every time. A fierce, gleeful tremor of satisfaction ran through him with every shot, even as he felt their shock and pain shiver across his skin. Warring abilities of death and healing, never meaning to coexist.
Just as he took aim once more at a man who had two of his companions in his sight, he felt someone slam into him, knocking him to the ground and his gun out of hands. As soon as the gun left his fingers, he felt a hollow emptiness fill him, as though he’d lost something important. He hit the ground and retched, struggling to face the one who’d struck him.
He turned and it was his father, smiling smugly at him, gun held in large, steady hands that he knew well, hands that knew as well as his own how to both hurt and heal. Words escaped him, and he stared numbly at his old man who laughed, and squeezed the trigger.
Remembering the wave of shock that radiated through his shoulder along with the bullet was never easy, the way he’d been tossed into the dirt, not so much as by the impact, but by the pain, screaming. Remembering lying, dying, surrounded by those he served with, but more alone than ever, bleeding out into the dirt. Thinking to himself that the red cross on his arm hadn’t even helped in the end, he would die out here along with his patients.
Worst of all, was the tearing agony in his soul as it split in two, the bullet ripping through muscle and bone, shadowed by the way it had torn his Guardian away from him.
He reached for his gun, held it loosely in his hand as he began to lose consciousness, but its comforting warmth was no longer there, now just a cold hunk of murderous metal. And he had never been as alone as he had been that day.
As alone as he was still.
John Watson jerked awake, pain slicing through his shoulder, heart thumping dully. He lay in his bed, panting, before slowly sitting, looking about warily.
The dream was a constant reminder of what he’d lost, as though he needed reminding. The ache was less today, but still there, a numbing emptiness echoed by his surroundings.
He glanced around at the sparse flat he’d lived in since his discharge, clean and free of anything personal. He hated the empty white walls, the sharp lines, and coldness of the apartment, even as he felt it accurately summed up who he was these days.
Most of all, he hated the cane, taunting him from its place propped against the desk. Hated how it mocked him with his own disability. Hated the reliance on it, when he’d never relied on anything before.
He shook the last vestiges of the dream away, standing stiffly and limping to the desk. Dawn was beginning to creep through his curtains; he’d spent the whole night tossing and turning. The exhaustion was nothing new, he knew what he’d see if he glanced in the mirror. An old and broken man, a doctor who killed, and a soldier who limped. Eyes haunted and hollowed by permanent purple shadows, face lined with the sins of his past.
Sliding the drawer open, he reached for his laptop, hand slowing over the butt of his handgun, lying where he’d shoved it months ago upon moving in. He couldn’t bear the feel of it anymore, the coldness of the metal where before touching it had been like the touch of a friend’s hand, familiar and welcoming. He remembered the days when the gun had truly been an extension of himself, filled with a fragment of his splintered soul, fierce and brave.
The gun was a mockery of himself that he’d caused. Its inanimateness, more than the empty flat or the limp, spoke of the man John Watson had become, nothing more than a shade of what he’d once been. Dim, cold metal, where once there had been vibrancy and life.
John grabbed his laptop and slammed the drawer shut, hiding the gun from view. He opened it and stared at the blank space, waited in vain for the words to come.
“How’s your blog going?” she asks him cheerily. He thinks for a moment about telling her he knows she’s faking the concern, but he can’t quite find the energy to say the words.
“Yeah, good,” he says, his smile brittle. He coughs slightly, shifting. He could block her emotions, or he used to be able to. It’s a lot harder now that most of his energy seems devoted to simply getting up every morning. He settles for ignoring the itch or boredom and sympathy he can feel radiating off her. “Very good.”
“You haven’t written a word, have you?” The boredom shifts, the itch becoming a pinch of frustration, and John sinks slightly, trying to shield against it. It’s harder without another source to draw power from, his own well is decidedly low. He watches her scribble on her pad, and frowns.
“You just wrote, ‘still has trust issues’,” he says, and she looks at him, startled. He knows she’d read the blog, he can taste it when she lies. As annoying as his empathy skills are, they can also be decidedly useful. The ability he’d been born with, his one true skill. The only skill he still hid from everyone.
And besides, he wouldn’t even need to be an Empath to know she planned to read every word he wrote. He was hardly forthcoming in their meetings. She wasn’t a very good therapist, he mused. But he gave her points for effort.
“And you read my writing upside-down.” He hadn’t. But she didn’t need to know that. “You see what I mean. John, you’re a soldier. And it’s going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life and... what you’ve lost. Writing a blog, everything that happens to you, will honestly help you.”
She thinks that if he’s patient, a new Guardian would make itself known to him eventually. He knows her attitude towards his position well. She won’t believe he’s Wingless because she looks at him and sees a still functional man.
He looks at himself and sees someone waiting for the end.
John sits rigid in the chair, staring disbelievingly at her. He knew as well as anyone that there were only so many chances you got, so many Angels allotted to you. And his fierce protector of the war, he’d been John’s third.
Most people didn’t even get a third. He knew he should count himself ridiculously lucky to have had that chance, but mostly he just felt heartsore. It wasn’t like a physical pain, this space where his Angel should be. It was a constant hollow in his chest, the echoes of his heartbeats endlessly trapped within, demanding he rectify this wrongness, as they rebounded and grew in the emptiness.
Incredibly, she was still talking. “Until you let your old Guardian go, the new one hasn’t got space to grow and form.”
John rather felt there was more than enough space, with the holes his former Guardians had left in his soul.
He knew that the words she was chattering were empty words. His files she had spread in front of her had almost everything about him in there, his childhood, his alcoholic father, his Guardians so far, but in the space left aside for magical talents, it had been left blank.
His first Angel had urged him silently to keep his empathy a secret, and he’d done so. It had been weak enough back then that his Father’s murderous rages had only been a discomfort, his Mother’s grief easily brushed aside and that people he didn’t know were quiet and blank to him.
His second Angel had strengthened his talent, grown and shaped it. Her power had amplified his. She had taught him how to taste emotions in the air, how to tell them apart from the sensations on his skin, to look at people out of the corner of his eye and see the pale flashes of their Angels beside them. A Healing and Helping Guardian, the most esteemed of the five Guardian classes. She had taught him to use his empathy to mend what was broken, to put together not only shattered bodies, but the scars on people’s minds as well.
Empath skills were firmly in the Communication and Mindsight class, and it was a class viewed mostly with suspicion and distrust. Much better to be known as a Healer and Helper.
He’d never seen an Angel clearly, only vague shapes and colours, and he could only imagine what form his own had taken. But he could feel the way his therapist’s emotions bounced off of her Angel, pity and slight boredom, with a hint of disgust at the possibility he was severed completely.
Those without Angels didn’t last long. Sunderings, the loss of a former Angel to make way for a new one, were a natural fact of life. The Guardian passed on, leaving a trace of taught abilities behind, a patchwork of skills unique to every person. But sometimes the Sundering was more permanent, more a Severing, and those were the broken, the hopeless, the mad.
If he was Severed, he wasn’t fit company, and John could feel the way her disgust tainted the rest of her emotions with a sickly taste, like bile in the back of his throat. It made his skin feel oily, and he fought the desire to wipe his hands clean.
He forced himself to look her in the eye as she continued to chatter about adjusting to civilian life, already deciding that his first adaption would be never to return to therapy. “Nothing happens to me.”
OCTOBER 12TH
His Angel screamed, pain lancing through him as the Beast threw it to the floor.
The hand holding the pill shook as he felt the claws of the Beast rake along his Guardian, a touch he’d never experienced. The pain felt distant, numbed.
The screams faded to a hum in the background as he raised the pill to his lips, light from the windows glittering, deaf to the agonised howls of his Protector.
The pill touched his lips.
Swallow.
Pain. Crumpled to the floor.
His Angel went first, a shower of gold visible only to him.
His turn.
NOVEMBER 26TH
Two boys sprinting up the street, laughing in the rain. Invisible to them, their Angels bounded behind, hounds with backs strangely humped from mantled wings, snapping playfully at one another.
One runs back, leaving a friend willing to share an umbrella.
Everything to live for.
Before he dies, the boy thinks he can hear the frantic barking of a dog struggling to reach its owner.
JANUARY 27TH
He watches impassively as she sobs and fights. She’s taken the longest to subdue out of all of them, but it’s easy eventually. Her Angel is old, slow. Soft from a life of ease, ill-suited to protection. Worthless.
It’s not worth it in the end, the fight. They all struggle, they all cry, they all wail. And then, they all die.
Once his Beast has hers pinned, it’s all over.
He doesn’t think this will ever lose its fun. He smiles as she slips the pill into her mouth, and the old Guardian dissolves into a shower of sparks.
The body of Beth Davenport, Junior Minister for Transport, was found late last night on a building site in Greater London.
He hates this. Hates the flashing cameras, the barked questions, the insatiable curiosity of the press. The callousness of it all, bottling a senseless death down into easily digested headlines.
Most of all, he hates being surrounded by so many people, not the easy good/bad kinds he’s used to, but the overwhelming press of grey and grey moralities round him.
He scans the crowd of reporters, trying to block his power from use. Even blocked, stuff filters through. He glances at a person, and in a moment, can sense their intentions.
It’s weak, and depends on his own assumptions about a person. But in a crowd like this, next to useless, bombarded with intentions and guilt and perversions.
It’s not like what... he... does. Not at all. Greg’s is a parlour trick, a little magic he can call up when needed. What he does, that’s truly useful. At best, Greg’s can tell him if someone is evil or good, and there’s plenty of middle ground that doesn’t cover.
His eyes flicker round the crowd, shutting out Sally’s voice, intoning about the apparent suicides (and aren’t they a puzzle?), trying to separate one person from another. He knows how out of place he looks in front of a crowd, awkward and fidgety. He can feel his Guardian, warm against his chest, curled round his warrant card in his breast pocket. His decoy ID is at his hip, after an unpleasant experience with an acquaintance attempting to steal the ID his Guardian perches on, he’d worn two as a precaution. It gives him some comfort, even though he knows it’s probably snoozing in there. The only time it ever truly feels awake and alive these days is when he’s on a case, keen-eyed and hungry.
“Detective Inspector Lestrade will take questions now.”
His name snaps him back to attention. The drone of chatter becomes a violent buzz, aimed at him. Time to bark for the crowd, then.
“Detective Inspector, how can suicides be linked?” A man with long hair, essentially an honest man, but there’s a smoky wisp round him. A hint of deception in his past, lies that scarred him. A promise of betrayal in his future.
The work of a moment, to see this and push it away. Eyes averted, to avoid seeing all the poor man’s dirty laundry. “Well, they all took the same poison,” he says, professional, cool. “They were all found in places they had no reason to be.” Glancing up, his eyes meet a man’s in the crowd, a flicker of violence. The bad always overshadowed the good, a kind word to a workmate, money donated to a cause.
The worst thing about his power, the inability to act on any of the information he gains from it. So that man may have stuck his wife as some point in the past, it could be twenty years ago now, or simply the day before. Perhaps even a week from now, it was often impossible to tell the future from the past. Useless, vague. He looks down again, pretending to glance at his notes. “None of them had shown any prior indication-“
“But you can’t have serial suicides.”
Lestrade frowns, irritated with the interruption. “Well, apparently you can.” Sally kicks him under the desk, shaking her head slightly. She knows him, knows how much the press bother him. Vultures. He avoids smiling, unwilling to goad her.
The man from before, who may or may not have struck his wife at some point. “These three people, there’s nothing that links them?”
“There’s no link we’ve found yet.” Carefully chosen words. “But, we’re looking for it - there has to be one.”
The room suddenly fills with the buzz and chime of dozens of ringtones, his and Sally’s included. Startled glance at his phone, and suddenly he can feel his Guardian, awake and humming with excitement, the taste of the chase already in his mouth. Outwardly, his facial expression doesn’t change.
Wrong!
He can hear Sally trying to calm the crowd, the reporters’ questioning the text, and he sighs slightly. She’s going to be unbearable to work with now that he’s shown an interest, and isn’t it about time.
“If they’re suicides, what are you investigating?”
Him again. “As I say, these suicides are clearly linked. It’s an unusual situation. We’ve got our best people investigating.”
The chatter of phones again, and how does he do that? Lestrade allows himself to feel mildly impressed, although he schools his expression into one of slight frustration. Wouldn’t do to let Sally see him smile at... well, these antics.
Wrong!
“Is there any chance that these are murders?” A woman this time, and Lestrade carefully blocks any of her from slipping through his shield. Now that his Angel is awake and buzzing, it’s easier to use his strength as a shield. “And if they are, is this the work of a serial killer?”
Damn. Those two words no copper likes to hear. The two words that mean late nights with no sleep, bad coffee, and mass hysteria. Choosing words carefully again, Sally silent at his side, fuming over the texts. “I know that you like writing about these, but these do appear to be suicides. We know the difference. The poison was clearly self-administered. “
“Yes, but if they are murders, how do people keep themselves safe?”
His patience slips away, with a thrum of anger from his Angel. “Well, don’t commit suicide,” he snaps, silencing her. They were wasting time here, they could be out tracking real criminals, doing real police work! Not throwing bones to this mob of hounds.
A mutter from Sally reminding him of their tenuous position in the eyes of the public. Damage control. “Obviously, this is a frightening time for people, but all anyone has to do is exercise reasonable precautions. We are all as safe as we want to be.”
A third time. Wrong!
This time his is different. He eyes it cautiously, an air of resignation. You know where to find me. SH
He tries to hide the excitement from Sally as he thanks them drily and leaps up, shoving his phone into his pocket as he goes.
Sally chased him. “You’ve got to stop him doing that, he’s making us look like idiots.” Sally is a good copper, loyal and firm, and he doesn’t need his gift to tell him that. But she needs to get off his case about their... agreement.
“If you can tell me how he does it, I’ll stop him.” A lie. They need him.
And they’re not the only ones, he thinks, a silent agreement hummed from his pocket.
Part Two