(Untitled)

[wormholed]

There were a billion stars in the sky over the Gulf. His father had told him that - not to discourage his young son from counting them, but to remind him just how big the universe was, and how many dreams it took to fill it

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[thebonelady]

Temperance had spent longer today on the autopsy and cleaning up afterwards than she ever had. While she'd already begun to look for ways around being the island's coroner and medical examiner and in charge of funeral preparations (the body, anyway) to boot, she would never do it with anything but respect and professionalism.

Today, even though she'd never known Ginger, she'd been careful, almost caring in her work. Death was an introduction that always stuck, and Temperance had spent hours in autopsy, and then cleaning and dressing her in clean clothes.

After that, she'd scrubbed herself, trying to remember that she had a husband at home who might need her. She couldn't deny the anxiety of her walk home, knowing she'd had to take a role in this that many people didn't like. Found offensive and invasive.

"Hi," she said from the doorway, her hair mostly dry from the walk, but her skin rosy from being washed so hard. Temperance looked down at her feet.

[wormholed]

"Hey." The stars didn't disappear, the fantasy opening until Temperance stood among them, clean and composed, but obviously fatigued.

John held out his hand to her.

[thebonelady]

She took his hand, and curled up beside him, tentatively, her cheek resting lightly on his chest. "I did everything I could. The investigation is out of my hands at this point."

She had no idea how much he wanted to know.

[wormholed]

John stroked her damp hair, silent for a while. He probably ought to have showered himself, stinking of sweat and wet grass and probably a little of death, but after they'd taken Ginger's body he'd only been able to stumble home.

"Thank you," he murmured finally. "For what you did for her. She couldn't've had a better - " But he couldn't finish. Ginger couldn't have had anyone better than Temperance to examine her, but the fact that Ginger shouldn't have needed it at all was still too close to his heart to get the words out.

[thebonelady]

"By the time it's my turn, it's never enough," Temperance said, finishing it for him. "She's ready for burial, whenever you and... anyone else would like to do that." She reached for his hands, slowly twining up their fingers.

"How much do you want to know?"

[wormholed]

Burial. John drew a ragged breath, holding it against the urge to let the cracks between one thought and the next fissure past repair. He wondered when it was in the day that madness had become so appealing.

The squirming of a bug between his fingers as he plucked it away from the wound in Ginger's head.. Yeah. It'd probably been there.

Where his strokes had become determined, they now gentled in Temperance's hair, and John drew another breath. Even this time.

"I want to know what you know."

[thebonelady]

Temperance nodded, pushing herself to keep from over-identifying with the case. It would be too easy. "The weapon used was either a bolt stunner or a weapon very much like it. With the possibility of weapons from a time and place unknown to us, I don't want to draw the wrong conclusion by not waiting." Her voice was low and soft, telling a story instead of the hard facts.

"It's likely that the killer never even touched her. We found a couple of footprints-- cowboy boots. Catherine and Grissom's people are working on the trace evidence."

[wormholed]

"Just snuffed her out like it was nothing," John echoed in his own words. It wasn't nothing. It was a hell of a lot more than nothing.

"She have time to be scared?"

[thebonelady]

"No," Temperance said. "No, she didn't."

She pressed her cheek harder into his chest, then turned her face to press a kiss there. "I'm sorry, John."

[wormholed]

"'least she didn't have time to suffer," John murmured. There was comfort in that, even if John hadn't found it yet. And there was comfort in knowing it'd been his wife who'd taken care of her - Ginger deserved the best, at least she'd gotten it.

"Maybe we can...brush the hair down over the hole in her head," he said. "For the funeral."