Fic: Speaking for the Dead (1/3)
Fandom: Blood Ties
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, Disturbing Subject Matter, Child Abuse
Spoilers: Deep Dark
Word Count: 2139
Summery: The second time Mike Celluci has a vision he's too drunk to notice.
AN: I originally posted this to the bloodtiesfic community, but since I'm trying to actually get this journal organized, I'm reposting it here.
The second time Mike Celluci has a vision he doesn't even realize it's happening. It's three days since he was put on suspension, had a heart to heart with a demon, and last saw Vicki and he's very, very drunk, drunkest he's been since he and Vicki went out to celebrate their academy graduation. So when the rush of images and strange disjointed feelings hit him, he figures he's either just had to much too drink or not enough. He pours himself another glass of whiskey and forgets it ever happened. Actually, he pretty much forgets everything until he wakes up the next day with what he's sure is the worst hangover in recorded history banging around in his skull and a message from Kate on his answering machine.
The third time he has a vision it's a week later, and he's back at work. Crowley was ready to see him crucified, but then someone let slip to a reporter that the detective who cracked that big kidnapping was put on suspension for following leads that his superior didn't like... leads that happen to have gotten results. The press had a field day with the whole mess and the next thing Mike knows he's back at work and rumor has it that Crowley's been called into the commissioner's officer for a serious dressing down. Crowley's walking around looking like someone shoved a lemon down her throat, Mike is staying out of her way, and Kate and Dave are looking entirely too pleased with themselves.
He's standing by the coffeemaker and reaching for the pot when the images hit. It's disjointed and fragmentary, and all he gets out of it is the image of a knife, an impression of a man's face, and a vague feeling of pain in his chest. He's not sure what the hell just happened, but then again it's 2:23 am on a Tuesday and he's been up for almost twenty hours working on a case and trying to (not think about Vicki) catch up on his backlog, so he chalks it up to too much stress and not enough sleep. He forgoes the coffee, puts away his paperwork and goes home. He doesn't realize what's happening to him until much later.
The next day, he and Dave are at a crime scene. It's a young woman, and she's been stabbed three times in the chest and dumped in an alley. She's wearing a set of flannel pajamas and was wrapped in her bathrobe, so it's a good bet she was killed in her home or close to it. Mike is struck by an odd sense of familiarity as he looks at the woman's wounds and he subconsciously rubs his own chest. The ME on the scene places TOD at sometime between one and four am on Tuesday, but Mike knows that she actually expired at 2:23. He just knows it somehow. It takes him about two seconds to convince himself that he's imagining things. He tries to forget about it and get back to work. The feeling of familiarity lingers, but he ignores it, he even manages to mostly ignore the way his stomach drops when Dr. Mohadevan places the girl's death at about 2:30. It's much harder to ignore the feeling of recognition when he meets Jake Reese.
The girl's name turns out to be Diana Blake. She was a college student with a full scholarship, sharing an apartment with a roommate. She had two cats, and from the look of her apartment, really liked teacups. The roommate, Katrina, was out with friends, and didn't get home until sunrise. They find some blood near the entrance to the apartment building, and one of the neighbors reports having seen Diana step out in her bathrobe to talk to a young man. Dave immediately suspects Diana's boyfriend. The guy seems nervous, Diana's roommate claims the two of them had a fight the night before Diana was killed, and the guy has no alibi.
“What college student actually sleeps at night?” Dave huffs. “I sure didn't. Did you? I know I didn't.”
Mike isn't so sure, but Crowley is in agreement with Dave. “Stay on the boyfriend,” she tells them. “Eventually, he'll make a mistake.”
Mike ignores the orders, and heads back to talk to the roommate. She's staying with her boyfriend, and when Mike gets there, she's not around, but he is. He is Jake Reese, Katrina's boyfriend, and Mike recognizes him. This is the murderer. Mike is sure of it.
Jake looks pretty scared. Mike asks him where he was when Diana died and Jake claims he was with Katrina, but Mike already knows that's not true. Katrina already told them that she was out with “the girls” and Mike is fairly certain that Jake doesn't fall into that category, so he hauls the guy in for questioning. Crowley gives him shit about it, but Mike sticks to his guns, and an hour later, Jake breaks down and confesses. He'd had a crush on Diana, but she'd shot him down weeks ago. The night he'd killed her, he'd had way too much to drink, grabbed a kitchen knife and gone over to her place, intent on scaring her a little. She'd come out to speak with him, they'd fought, and he lost it and killed her.
The search team turns up some blood splattered clothing crammed in a garbage bag in the back of Jake's closet. Mike finds the knife in the kitchen. He knows it the moment he sees it. It's been washed, but the lab turns up traces of human blood where the hilt meets the blade. Dave starts joking that Mike's got ESP now. Mike begs off, saying that it's the only knife that matches Diana's wounds, but there's an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. It takes him a while to realize that he's afraid.
Th next vision comes only a few days later while he's sitting at his desk doing paperwork. When he snaps out of it, Kate is giving him a concerned look and asking him if he's okay. Mike gets the call less than an hour afterwards. It's a young business man, and he's been shot twice in the gut. His wallet's been taken. It's been made to look like a mugging, but Mike already knows it's not. He arrests the man's business partner that day. They find the murder weapon and the dead man's wallet in his desk, and it doesn't take long to get a confession out of him.
They keep coming. They're always of cases Mike is about to get, and they steadily become more frequent, until he's almost surprised to get a case he hasn't already seen happen. He's solving cases so quickly that he's up for a commendation in no time, the other detectives are in awe, Dave is back to making ESP jokes, and even Crowley tells him that he's been doing good work, though she attributes it to the lack of Vicki in his life. Mike almost punches her for that, but restrains himself.
Despite the wonders it's doing for his career, Mike wishes the visions would stop. They're starting to wear him down. Not only do they come at problematic times (he nearly crashes his car when one hits him while he's driving), but they're becoming more and more vivid. At first he just gets flashes of pain, but as they become stronger, the sensations become more powerful, and god, dying hurts. After a while the pains starts to linger. He feels the phantom wounds even after the visions are done. He's popping pain killers almost constantly just so he can think. At the same time he feels guilty for wanting them to stop. He's putting killers away and probably saving lives because of these visions. A little pain seems like a small price to pay next to that.
He doesn't know what to do. This is Vicki's mess all over again. He's certain that demon did something to him when it showed him that first vision and he needs to figure out a way to fix it, because he's sure that having demoniacally induced visions of people being murdered is not a good thing, but he can't go back to Vicki about it. It's not right. He's lost Vicki, cut her out of his life after everything that happened. Oh, she called him repeatedly. When he didn't pick up, she left him messages, but he deleted them without listening. He can't risk letting her back in. She'll use him up until there's nothing left if he lets her... and he will let her, because he loves her. Let the poets and country singers go on about unrequited love, in reality, it sucks.
He tries doing research on his own, but he can't find anything about demoniacally induced death visions. He's no Coreen and this wacky psychic stuff is way beyond him.
Hi coworkers notice his “episodes.” Kate is the first to call him on it; on the way he seems to blank out and wakes up grimacing in pain, and how he's always taking painkillers. He tells her he's just having headaches and he can tell she doesn't believe it for a second. The downside of being a detective, it turns out, is working with detectives.
He's in his kitchen late one night, grabbing a midnight snack when one of the damn visions hits him. Next thing he knows he's in the park. There's a girl tied to a tree and some guy is driving a knife slowly into her shoulder. She's sobbing and screaming into her gag, and shit it hurts, but the worst part is that he knows where this is. He's jogged through this area a hundred times. He could save her, stop this, except he can't because he stuck in the damned vision. The guy keeps at it with the knife and all Mike can do is die with her.
It takes a long time.
When he wakes up it's dawn, his phone is ringing, he's laying on the floor, and he hurts so bad he can barely move. He sucks it up, pulls himself to his feet and answers. It's Crowley, they've found a body in the park, and she needs him there asap, but then he knows that already. He's convinced it can't possibly get any worse than this. He's wrong.
Mike gives a description of the murderer and pretends it's an anonymous tip. Turns out the guy is a budding serial killer. He gets one more before they catch him and Mike sees that one too. This time Kate catches the tail end of the vision. He's at his desk doing paperwork. It's so late it's early, and he's pretty much alone, but then he really has no other place to be and he wants to be there when they catch this guy. When he comes to from the vision, he's still in his chair, but Kate is holding onto his shoulders and shaking him. She looks terrified.
“Mike! Mike! Are you okay?” she asks, fear coloring her voice.
“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine I just dozed off for a moment.” he tells her, carefully shifting sore muscles and bringing one hand up to rub at his face.
She looks doubtful. “Mike, you weren't asleep. You were having a seizure or something. I saw you. You were twitching.” Her fingers are digging into his shoulders and aggravating the phantom pains left behind by the killer's knife.
“Kate, I'm fine. Please let go of me.”
She jumps back from him like she's been burned. “I'm calling the paramedics.” she says, pulling her phone out.
“Kate.” She ignores him and starts to dial. “Kate! I'm fine, leave it alone!” he snaps, and she jumps a little, but closes the phone. She looks hurt, and he feels bad for taking that tone with her. “Look, it's nothing, I'm just tired and stressed.” She obviously doesn't believe him, but she drops it.
It gets worse.
This time he's at home again (thank god he's alone) when it hits. It's a little boy and his father is hitting him, hard, over and over. Suddenly Mike is sevententhirteensixteen again and it's not the stranger hitting him, it's his own father. The line blurs until he doesn't know where he stops and the boy in the vision begins. This time when he wakes up he's shaking and he can't stop. His eyes are moist and his throat is raw. He'd thought he'd put all that behind him years ago, yet now it's back and he feels like someone just ripped a decades old scab off a wound that never quite healed.
He spends the next three days waiting for the call and trying to put himself back together.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, Disturbing Subject Matter, Child Abuse
Spoilers: Deep Dark
Word Count: 2139
Summery: The second time Mike Celluci has a vision he's too drunk to notice.
AN: I originally posted this to the bloodtiesfic community, but since I'm trying to actually get this journal organized, I'm reposting it here.
The second time Mike Celluci has a vision he doesn't even realize it's happening. It's three days since he was put on suspension, had a heart to heart with a demon, and last saw Vicki and he's very, very drunk, drunkest he's been since he and Vicki went out to celebrate their academy graduation. So when the rush of images and strange disjointed feelings hit him, he figures he's either just had to much too drink or not enough. He pours himself another glass of whiskey and forgets it ever happened. Actually, he pretty much forgets everything until he wakes up the next day with what he's sure is the worst hangover in recorded history banging around in his skull and a message from Kate on his answering machine.
The third time he has a vision it's a week later, and he's back at work. Crowley was ready to see him crucified, but then someone let slip to a reporter that the detective who cracked that big kidnapping was put on suspension for following leads that his superior didn't like... leads that happen to have gotten results. The press had a field day with the whole mess and the next thing Mike knows he's back at work and rumor has it that Crowley's been called into the commissioner's officer for a serious dressing down. Crowley's walking around looking like someone shoved a lemon down her throat, Mike is staying out of her way, and Kate and Dave are looking entirely too pleased with themselves.
He's standing by the coffeemaker and reaching for the pot when the images hit. It's disjointed and fragmentary, and all he gets out of it is the image of a knife, an impression of a man's face, and a vague feeling of pain in his chest. He's not sure what the hell just happened, but then again it's 2:23 am on a Tuesday and he's been up for almost twenty hours working on a case and trying to (not think about Vicki) catch up on his backlog, so he chalks it up to too much stress and not enough sleep. He forgoes the coffee, puts away his paperwork and goes home. He doesn't realize what's happening to him until much later.
The next day, he and Dave are at a crime scene. It's a young woman, and she's been stabbed three times in the chest and dumped in an alley. She's wearing a set of flannel pajamas and was wrapped in her bathrobe, so it's a good bet she was killed in her home or close to it. Mike is struck by an odd sense of familiarity as he looks at the woman's wounds and he subconsciously rubs his own chest. The ME on the scene places TOD at sometime between one and four am on Tuesday, but Mike knows that she actually expired at 2:23. He just knows it somehow. It takes him about two seconds to convince himself that he's imagining things. He tries to forget about it and get back to work. The feeling of familiarity lingers, but he ignores it, he even manages to mostly ignore the way his stomach drops when Dr. Mohadevan places the girl's death at about 2:30. It's much harder to ignore the feeling of recognition when he meets Jake Reese.
The girl's name turns out to be Diana Blake. She was a college student with a full scholarship, sharing an apartment with a roommate. She had two cats, and from the look of her apartment, really liked teacups. The roommate, Katrina, was out with friends, and didn't get home until sunrise. They find some blood near the entrance to the apartment building, and one of the neighbors reports having seen Diana step out in her bathrobe to talk to a young man. Dave immediately suspects Diana's boyfriend. The guy seems nervous, Diana's roommate claims the two of them had a fight the night before Diana was killed, and the guy has no alibi.
“What college student actually sleeps at night?” Dave huffs. “I sure didn't. Did you? I know I didn't.”
Mike isn't so sure, but Crowley is in agreement with Dave. “Stay on the boyfriend,” she tells them. “Eventually, he'll make a mistake.”
Mike ignores the orders, and heads back to talk to the roommate. She's staying with her boyfriend, and when Mike gets there, she's not around, but he is. He is Jake Reese, Katrina's boyfriend, and Mike recognizes him. This is the murderer. Mike is sure of it.
Jake looks pretty scared. Mike asks him where he was when Diana died and Jake claims he was with Katrina, but Mike already knows that's not true. Katrina already told them that she was out with “the girls” and Mike is fairly certain that Jake doesn't fall into that category, so he hauls the guy in for questioning. Crowley gives him shit about it, but Mike sticks to his guns, and an hour later, Jake breaks down and confesses. He'd had a crush on Diana, but she'd shot him down weeks ago. The night he'd killed her, he'd had way too much to drink, grabbed a kitchen knife and gone over to her place, intent on scaring her a little. She'd come out to speak with him, they'd fought, and he lost it and killed her.
The search team turns up some blood splattered clothing crammed in a garbage bag in the back of Jake's closet. Mike finds the knife in the kitchen. He knows it the moment he sees it. It's been washed, but the lab turns up traces of human blood where the hilt meets the blade. Dave starts joking that Mike's got ESP now. Mike begs off, saying that it's the only knife that matches Diana's wounds, but there's an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. It takes him a while to realize that he's afraid.
Th next vision comes only a few days later while he's sitting at his desk doing paperwork. When he snaps out of it, Kate is giving him a concerned look and asking him if he's okay. Mike gets the call less than an hour afterwards. It's a young business man, and he's been shot twice in the gut. His wallet's been taken. It's been made to look like a mugging, but Mike already knows it's not. He arrests the man's business partner that day. They find the murder weapon and the dead man's wallet in his desk, and it doesn't take long to get a confession out of him.
They keep coming. They're always of cases Mike is about to get, and they steadily become more frequent, until he's almost surprised to get a case he hasn't already seen happen. He's solving cases so quickly that he's up for a commendation in no time, the other detectives are in awe, Dave is back to making ESP jokes, and even Crowley tells him that he's been doing good work, though she attributes it to the lack of Vicki in his life. Mike almost punches her for that, but restrains himself.
Despite the wonders it's doing for his career, Mike wishes the visions would stop. They're starting to wear him down. Not only do they come at problematic times (he nearly crashes his car when one hits him while he's driving), but they're becoming more and more vivid. At first he just gets flashes of pain, but as they become stronger, the sensations become more powerful, and god, dying hurts. After a while the pains starts to linger. He feels the phantom wounds even after the visions are done. He's popping pain killers almost constantly just so he can think. At the same time he feels guilty for wanting them to stop. He's putting killers away and probably saving lives because of these visions. A little pain seems like a small price to pay next to that.
He doesn't know what to do. This is Vicki's mess all over again. He's certain that demon did something to him when it showed him that first vision and he needs to figure out a way to fix it, because he's sure that having demoniacally induced visions of people being murdered is not a good thing, but he can't go back to Vicki about it. It's not right. He's lost Vicki, cut her out of his life after everything that happened. Oh, she called him repeatedly. When he didn't pick up, she left him messages, but he deleted them without listening. He can't risk letting her back in. She'll use him up until there's nothing left if he lets her... and he will let her, because he loves her. Let the poets and country singers go on about unrequited love, in reality, it sucks.
He tries doing research on his own, but he can't find anything about demoniacally induced death visions. He's no Coreen and this wacky psychic stuff is way beyond him.
Hi coworkers notice his “episodes.” Kate is the first to call him on it; on the way he seems to blank out and wakes up grimacing in pain, and how he's always taking painkillers. He tells her he's just having headaches and he can tell she doesn't believe it for a second. The downside of being a detective, it turns out, is working with detectives.
He's in his kitchen late one night, grabbing a midnight snack when one of the damn visions hits him. Next thing he knows he's in the park. There's a girl tied to a tree and some guy is driving a knife slowly into her shoulder. She's sobbing and screaming into her gag, and shit it hurts, but the worst part is that he knows where this is. He's jogged through this area a hundred times. He could save her, stop this, except he can't because he stuck in the damned vision. The guy keeps at it with the knife and all Mike can do is die with her.
It takes a long time.
When he wakes up it's dawn, his phone is ringing, he's laying on the floor, and he hurts so bad he can barely move. He sucks it up, pulls himself to his feet and answers. It's Crowley, they've found a body in the park, and she needs him there asap, but then he knows that already. He's convinced it can't possibly get any worse than this. He's wrong.
Mike gives a description of the murderer and pretends it's an anonymous tip. Turns out the guy is a budding serial killer. He gets one more before they catch him and Mike sees that one too. This time Kate catches the tail end of the vision. He's at his desk doing paperwork. It's so late it's early, and he's pretty much alone, but then he really has no other place to be and he wants to be there when they catch this guy. When he comes to from the vision, he's still in his chair, but Kate is holding onto his shoulders and shaking him. She looks terrified.
“Mike! Mike! Are you okay?” she asks, fear coloring her voice.
“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine I just dozed off for a moment.” he tells her, carefully shifting sore muscles and bringing one hand up to rub at his face.
She looks doubtful. “Mike, you weren't asleep. You were having a seizure or something. I saw you. You were twitching.” Her fingers are digging into his shoulders and aggravating the phantom pains left behind by the killer's knife.
“Kate, I'm fine. Please let go of me.”
She jumps back from him like she's been burned. “I'm calling the paramedics.” she says, pulling her phone out.
“Kate.” She ignores him and starts to dial. “Kate! I'm fine, leave it alone!” he snaps, and she jumps a little, but closes the phone. She looks hurt, and he feels bad for taking that tone with her. “Look, it's nothing, I'm just tired and stressed.” She obviously doesn't believe him, but she drops it.
It gets worse.
This time he's at home again (thank god he's alone) when it hits. It's a little boy and his father is hitting him, hard, over and over. Suddenly Mike is sevententhirteensixteen again and it's not the stranger hitting him, it's his own father. The line blurs until he doesn't know where he stops and the boy in the vision begins. This time when he wakes up he's shaking and he can't stop. His eyes are moist and his throat is raw. He'd thought he'd put all that behind him years ago, yet now it's back and he feels like someone just ripped a decades old scab off a wound that never quite healed.
He spends the next three days waiting for the call and trying to put himself back together.