Post-mortems
He gets the phone call in the showers, with his arm elbow-deep in his locker. How's Chris doing? Mendez is asking. Fine, Beston says, telling the lie for his partner. It's what partners do, back each other up. He'll be fine.
The phone squeals in his pocket, and three other detectives, heading onto shift, check their coats. "Not mine," Ken says in passing.
John digs his cell out of his jeans and flicks it open. Bundles of socks drop on his head. He puffs out exasperation. "Beston."
It is Tucci that notices his face changing. He nudges Yamaguchi, who turns and looks, half in, half out of his holster.
"Yeah," Beston says to the person on the other end. "He's not-- he's supposed to be...."
And then, eyes closing, "Shit."
Tucci ambles to stand at Beston's shoulder, eyes falcon-bright. "What's up?"
"He probably already knows," John says. "I'll look. Stay there, Julia. I'll be right by."
"Julia?" asks Spiccati, a towel slung over his shoulders, still dripping from the shower. "Julia Rossi? You're too ugly to be tapping that fine ass." He is a model of ill-timed vulgarities.
"What's up?" Tucci asks again.
Beston tells them, and leaves.
In the locker room, the detectives look at each other, faces set. Tucci says it for them.
Fuck.
---
Breaking windows, like sleeping seated in an uncomfortable chair, is something done for a reason. Possibly an unstable reason, but a reason. Or so, Scott surmises, typing a summary out with frigid hands, it is to him. Everything done for a reason. And nonetheless, one could wish for a warmer, more rational penance, like teaching children in Africa. Almost. More rational penance, perhaps. More proactive. More reminders that one is Protestant, not Catholic and does not resort to scratchy wool and fur with the bristles turned inward. Helps no one. Type type, a summary of what? He's a creature of technicality and process in practice, not words. And the wind keeps whistling in and out of the window like a punctured lung. Scott wears nothing warmer than a polo.
Penance of a different sort drives the silent visitor up the corridor, a long, sleepless night written on the stark face. Det. Rossi strides at the heels of his guide, a nod to courtesy letting the younger, shorter legs trot just before his own blank-eyed pace; he chivies the boy like a wind, a black presence in overcoat and suit: disarmed, disinterested.
"Here," says the boy, pausing before Scott's door. He peers doubtfully over his shoulder at Professor Summer's guest, and shuffles away from the bite of cold under the wood. "This is his room. Do you want me to--"
The detective stares blindly at the door, and makes a fist. Thumps its knuckles in a knock. Civilized men do this, herald their approach. Knock. And then, by rote, wait.
Scott stops typing, suddenly embarrassed by Word and gooseflesh, and his awkward typing. But visitors. He knuckles the monitor off, rubs his arms briskly and uselessly, stands, and takes a quick and direct route toward the door. This is opened-- "Oh." Scott's glasses meet Rossi's eyes blankly. "Come in."
The little guide frets, bobbing with anxiety and protective something-or-another; he presses himself against the door frame, setting his piping voice up. "If you want me to /stay/, Professor Summers," he says, heroic in the face of the incomprehensible.
Det. Rossi -- Chris -- says nothing, accepting the invitation without comment or surprise. He feeds himself through the space, stepping into cold, into ice, into wind, and warms nothing.
"Not you," Scott says, unsmiling, to the guide, and the door clicks shut. His hand pauses on the doorknob, his fingers testing temperature and texture, before he decides and presses the button in the knob that will keep the door locked from the inside. He turns. "So."
His guest stands in the center of the room, straight-shouldered in his stance, regarding the broken window without interest: without curiosity, or remark. The wind tugs peevishly at his overcoat, flipping it wide over the empty holster; the pocket for the badge gapes like an empty eyesocket, missing its feral glitter. "Thought I'd come by," Rossi says, baritone husky and dispassionate.
"Good." Scott remains near the door, shoulders high and formal and both eyebrows and mouth set in flat, impassive lines, save for a small cleft beside the right eyebrow, almost raising it. "I wanted to apologize."
This earns a look. Clear, green, distant-- "Don't."
Scott's eyebrow does raise, a touch. His lips part cautiously in a pause before he speaks. "Very well."
"There's nothing to--" Rossi's mouth thins, those fine, sybarite lips folding over the words, sliding askew. Somewhere in there is the parody of a smile. "You got a God complex, Summers. You don't have anything to apologize for."
Both eyebrows draw in and darken the space between brow and glasses, but the tension is momentary and Scott's face releases itself, not into relaxation, but into a fall. "I got cocky," he says, quietly.
The detective stirs, sharply, and stills. The fine, strong face redraws itself in a duller mask. "Magneto didn't get her."
"Magneto never cared enough." Scott puffs a laugh. "He's an old man. Malice and whim unless he forgets and turns grandfather."
"Tell that to my surgeon," says Rossi, watching the aftermath of breath with a blank-eyed, blind-eyed curiosity. Shoulders lift under the heavy coat, marking slow, endless time. "Anyway. He didn't get her."
"No. And what's a little shrapnel to us? Magneto is merciful." Scott's second puffed laugh is brittle and brief. "We're all still alive."
Most of us. Mordant humor. The corner of Rossi's mouth dips into shadow, tugged awry. "Yeah," he says instead, and turns back a little to look, once more, at that broken window. "You guys hunting him?"
"He's an old man." Scott turns his chin in a constricted, partial shake of his head. "What's the use? More men killed in a strike operation he'll undo in a month? Free again. That one breaks his cage every time. Let him dodder and die of a heart attack. Any day."
"I don't want Pezhead," Chris Rossi tells the wind. "I want the Friends."
"Me too."
"All I want for Christmas." The black head turns; the profile shows itself, etched in sharp, aching lines against the light. "Think you can arrange that, Poodle King?"
Another laugh and this one is long and throat-scraping dry. When it finishes, Scott's chin juts and the left lens of his glasses mirror the window in red. "What can I give you? A few names you already know, probably false. Leads you already have. I lead a strike team. Intelligence isn't my area. All I know are field tactics and trigonometry. I'm a tool. But give me an address, and I'll help you hunt."
The detective jerks a little, the barest shiver in the long, tight frame. Breath weaves a disappearing halo around the turn of his head: back, away, around again to sweep the room in a meaningless, incurious glance. "I'm off the case, but the Friends -- I can find some names. Get you going. Who does your intelligence? Someone's got to point you in the right direction. The Feds? Spooks? Who's holds /your/ leash, Summers?"
Scott jerks his chin higher and his glasses mirror nothing. "A pair of telepaths. Lowest level of command above me. They do the intelligence. Too much data and a programmed thing like me can't function. Poodle King. Hah. Point and tell me where to go. That's how it works."
"Grey," says Rossi, unease an unfinished shape beneath the name.
"She's one," Scott says, his voice dropping to a mere scratch. "I rank her in the field. She does considerably better than me anywhere else."
"Who else?"
"Xavier, of course."
Of course. Rossi nods. Nods, while a breeze punctuates revelation by perching on his shoulder and whispering in his ear. "So," he says. "Will they help?"
"Can't allow terrorism. Besides, they're only my /direct/ superiors, right?" Scott's eyes shut behind his glasses, causing a loosening of the severe eyebrows. "Someone will take care of it. The orders."
"Someone." Rossi -- almost -- smiles. "It's your patriotic duty."
"Of course. But, of course, I can only do my patriotic duty with orders."
"We'll find some." We'll make some. Green skips away, unfocused again, distracted. "Friends--"
"--deserve a fair trial in a court of law, with as few injuries incurred during capture as possible," Scott recites, low and dull. His eyes pull back open.
Det. Rossi says to the wall, the winter, the ear of God, "Fair trial. Right." The baritone rasps a little, its nap rubbed back to show darker color. He turns, shoulders tight once more, drifting into motion: towards the door, and the hallway beyond. "Anyway. I thought I'd check up on you. Make sure you were okay."
"Thanks. But I'm never anything to worry about." Scott raises his hand toward the knob, but it stops, fingers only half outstretched. "And you?"
The leaf-dyed gaze sweeps up, as opaque as ruby crystal. He lies with his eyes. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm just fine."
Scott's lip quirks up. "Of course. We can't be touched." His hand closes on the door knob and unlocks it with the press of a thumb.
"Teflon," says Rossi, and steps aside to give it room to open. "I'll call you when I find something. When I find some leads."
Scott turns the knob to the side and draws the door back. Hall's exposed. "Thanks."
Det. Rossi leaves. No farewells. The shambling stride bears him down the corridor, heavy tread crushing the cold beneath its feet.
Scott shuts the door after him and depresses the lock. Still has gooseflesh on his arms.
---
Cold wraps its arms around Det. Rossi, thin comfort, thinner armor. The hallways of the faculty residences disgorge him, unarmed, badge a plucked tooth under the heavy black of overcoat. Exhaustion. The still face shows its signs, in the shadows and strains that sketch the skull under skin; he bears his mood with him, a thing of angles and opaque planes that drives students out of his path with startled eyes and -- for the more psychically sensitive -- blinding, buffeting pain.
TGIF. He steps into the lobby and pauses there, eyes hooded and blank.
Vincent, in turn, is in a more characteristic state of semi-exhaustion, the stubble that colors his jaw indicative of his lack of interest in getting up early enough to shave /and/ be here on time. That was three hours ago. Now he's here, and on his way out - a damp white towel slung over the shoulder of his leather jacket. The grey t-shirt beneath the jacket is somewhat more damp. Particularly around the armpit and chest regions. Past Rossi, down the lobby's length - eyes down on the iPod he's currently fumbling with.
Sightless eyes track stranger movement than the smaller, slighter sprites that infest the school. The pale gaze follows; the laggard mind, still swathed in the previous night's wool, wakes and pushes intelligence back into its throne. "Lazzaro." Puzzled, that, a name out of place. Rossi stirs and takes a step. "Hey."
A familiar voice. Not entirely sure whether or not he just heard his name, Vincent hesitates, head lifting away from his ongoing struggle to locate a perfect level of volume. His thumb mashes the pause button, and the right earphone is extracted as he turns to squint at the probable source of that voice behind him.
Face to face. Chris Rossi regards the smaller man without curiosity, the memory of the night past a breathing thing under his mask. Hands plow into pockets, shaping the coat's lines wide and taut, away from the sag of suit: last night's clothes, last night's fatigue. "Lazzaro," he says again, without inflection. His gaze roams across Vincent's body, reading those telltale signs of exertion -- and then traces its way back up, to meet brown eyes with green.
Vincent stiffens - brows tilting up, and then abruptly down again. His right hand stays right where it is, holding an earphone at jaw level. His eyes have very little to say, aside from saying that he maybe isn't all that happy to see Rossi here. Aaah. If only his mutation involved Jedi mind tricks. "Er...Rossi."
Det. Rossi rocks a little, adjusting weight here, there, here again on the rudders of his heels. The brush of his overcoat slips against his pants legs, soothing, idle whispers -- gossip -- under the curl of adolescent voices. "Lazzaro," he bats back, baritone bland. Incurious, even. Black lashes sweep low, a lattice to sliver and splinter his inspection. "Hey."
This isn't what it looks like. What does it look like? Maybe it looks like he had a date with Jean Grey. Vincent turns the rest of the way to face Rossi and tugs the second earphone out - the cord looped around the back of his neck and dropped. He's starting to sweat again. "Hey."
Shiny, so shiny, perspiration on skin. Rossi's skin is cold and dry, a dark mold carved out and left hollow. "How's it going?" he asks, drifting detached interest across the other man: his iPod, his towel, his sweat-grimed shirt.
Maybe he's distracted by Leah being dead. God, that's a shitty thing to think. Vincent's brows twitch even further downward at his own line of thought. "Oh. You know. Just..."
"Doing a little training?" asks Rossi, mild.
Vincent's jaw muscles tighten visibly. He lifts his free hand to rub the back of it over his brow, temporarily clearing the sheen that's been gathering there. "Listen, Chris-"
Chris's eyes widen slightly to show the frame of white around the green, just shy of mockery. His head tilts; black droops jagged feathers across the wide brow. Patience settles the man, a heavy shroud. He is listening. /Speak/.
Nnn. Vincent draws in a deep, uneasy breath - wary. Untrusting. It's becoming difficult to think through the cold knot turning slowly over in his guts. "I..." Forcing Rossi off the case. Conflict of interest. Shit, shit, shit. "Nobody knows about this."
"Yeah?" says Chris, betraying nothing. The waiting eyes watch, unblinking, something cold and clinical looking through them. "Nobody?"
"These people," Vincent corrects after a few seconds of hesitation. And then, "Melcross," after a few seconds more. "Melcross was an accident. That night we were drinking, I did it on accident."
"Melcross." A shadow -- a glimpse of some unformed, darkling thing -- moves behind Rossi's face, gone before it can be recognized and named. Eyebrows twitch together, digging the thinnest of wrinkles. "And?"
"That's it. My parents knew."
"And now me."
"And now you."
"So." The word spins out flat, humorless. "Now what?"
"It isn't dangerous. I'm not...dangerous. It can't hurt anyone."
The look Rossi gives Vincent is odd, if unreadable still. Hesitation pauses the Brooklyn baritone; the smallest, barbed edge of uncertainty splits the cryptic expression. "Show me."
"There's a noise." Vincent supplies, the way he's eyeing Rossi having changed very little. If anything, the look in his eyes is a little more nervous than it was. "It can be loud."
Chris shrugs. The arms, their hands locked into coat pockets, straighten into the shrug. Indifference. Acceptance. "So there's noise," he says, voice neutral. "It going to break any windows? My eardrums?"
"No." Still rigid, Vincent swallows and looks away. THUNK. Where the detective was, a tenuous cloud of dark smoke curls. THUNK. Behind Rossi, he reppears an instant later, iPod still in hand - the same substance furling black around his shoulders. "Tada."
The back facing Vincent is hard and tight, muscle bunched around the march of spine. For a moment longer Rossi stands as he is, head cocked, body drawn in sharp, penned lines. Then he turns, half-way, scything a look at Vincent over the slope of his shoulder. "Oh," he says, simply. "You're a mutant."
Rossi's look is met with one that would be dry if he was a little more certain that Rossi was kidding. "I'm a criminal investigator. If this gets out, my job is gone."
Fine skin tightens over the line of jaw, and jumps across the skip of pulse in the line of Rossi's throat. "I don't out people," he says, baritone abruptly harsh. "I don't screw over my partners." Chris swings away, setting his stride towards the great lobby doors and the open porch beyond. Heels dig a metronome's rhythm on the polished floor.
"No shit." Vincent snaps after him, the heel of his hand already digging into the bridge of his nose. Fuck.
The door slams open in misplaced violence. It has weathered worse, at the hands of enthusiastic youth. Cold floods the lobby, diving into the mansion on the back of an eager, jubilant wind. It flings Chris's coat skirts wide, flapping them in a murder of crow black; the detective stalks outside, stride driving bullets into the wooden slats.
Vincent squeezes his eyes shut, and doesn't open them or alter his position until he realizes that he feels eyes on his back, and turns to scowl moodily at an owl-eyed Jones. "Piss off, kid." A slow turn executed, Vincent paces for the door only after plenty of time has passed for Rossi to vanish.
---
The city morgue is a quiet place, a basement of tiled walls and floors, of antiseptic coolth and buzzing white overhead lights. Detective (First Grade) Pat Malloy, veteran whippet son of Ireland's auld soil, sits on a bench outside one of the main examination rooms and plays with a cigarette in his hands, between the braced spread of his knees, under the hunch of his dark head. He glances up at the door in front of him -- closed -- then at the clock on the wall beside it -- ticking towards midnight -- and goes back to turning the cigarette over and over blunted, delicate fingers.
The door cribs open, yawning sleepily to a hand's push. Slips shut. Rocks, contemplating itself and its partner. Opens again -- and lets Chris Rossi in, Det. Rossi, Homicide, Mutant Affairs, son of Sgt. Rossi, brother of Officer, of Detective--
Black coat, black hair, seamless mood and unlettered face. The door mourns on its close behind him, gusting regret across the tall frame. Clear eyes, tired, find Pat in his seat and recognize him, placing him in history and context. They tighten at their corners, dying green darker color. But. "--Malloy." The Brooklyn-scored baritone is rough and unpracticed, creaky from disuse.
"Hey." Malloy stands on the word, raises tired eyes to the taller man's. The cigarette goes into his leather jacket's pocket. Then his hands do, each to each, to rest there like small tense animals. "Just wanted to say -- well. I heard."
Rossi nods. Simple enough acknowledgment, resting the frayed voice and its weary throat. He crosses the floor on a low-swung stride, feet scuffing the sterile floor in its path. One hand offers itself. Greeting, between men: respect, between colleagues. "Thanks, for--" Rough, rough, that rasp over raw vocal cords. The detective hesitates, and reclaims discipline. "The other night. Thanks."
Hand meets hand, and Malloy's grip is firm. Holds a bit. Lets go. "Yeah," he says softly, with an out-of-towner's cleanness: a home somewhere further north, further inland. He tips a shrug, rolls his head to the door next to his bench, then looks back at Rossi. "Anytime, man. You know that. She was--" Another break. Another shrug. "She was a good one. I'm sorry."
A good one. Rossi's glance at Malloy is faintly quizzical. "Depends on who you talk to," he says, like the ghost of an old, weatherworn joke. It scrapes over the urban landscape, a sham of amusement. He tucks his hand back into his pocket and leaves it there, solid, round, out of sight. Useless. "So."
"So." Pat Malloy finds quiet comfort, respite, in the repetition. He studies his scuffed wingtips. He looks up. His face is careworn, weary, concerned. Unsure. "Rodgers -- she's been waitin' for you. In there." Jerk of head at the door beside him. "If you want me to wait around . . ."
"It's your case," says Rossi, his gaze finding the door and clinging there, leashed. A ribbon of bitterness threads through the reminder, skeining the acknowledgment in faint, unconscious resentment. "I don't want to step on your toes." And yet. He shifts his weight, turning towards it, towards the waiting woman. Women--
Malloy rolls his eyes at that and adopts a lofty sort of growl: what a boy from Vermont's sawmill country would throw at a Brooklyn raptor ruffling his feathers, sharpening his beak. "Get the fuck in the room, asshole. My toes are fine. If I need to worry about them, I will absolutely let you know. Okay?"
In lighter times, there would be a grin for that. Reciprocal mockery, companionable or challenging. Tonight, Rossi simply nods, shuttling the other man a shuttered, unreadable glance before the waiting Rodgers (terrible yearning, terrible reluctance) is answered. A shoulder serves to knock the door open. His fists -- his impotent, ineffectual hands -- stay couched and hidden.
The woman standing next to her desk in the small, crowded, cold office glances up from the manila folder in her hands. She's red-haired, average, whetted like an axe with gimlet eyes and pale, firm lips. "Detective," she greets him, and some of her face's austere hauteur softens, just for that naming moment. Then she's brisk, and she's business. "Come in. Just got the toxicology report back."
"Tell me a story, Rodgers," Rossi says back, a grim caricature of his usual self. "What, was she on heroin? Cocaine? Little alien crystals from Mars?" The twist of lips greets her, fracturing that lucite mask for a moment's break before it settles again: face, expression, unemotional professionalism. Cop eyes. Dead eyes. "Rush job?"
"No, no, no, and yeah, no kidding, on a case like this." Rodgers awls him with a dry look and snaps the folder shut. Tosses it onto the desk and its lo, so many piles of others. She folds her arms over her white lab coat and judges him with a slight tilt of chin, tip of head. "She wasn't on anything. Clean as a whistle. You expecting otherwise?"
Det. Rossi idles next to the examiner's desk, untucking hands to be the Devil's work: a pen, a stapler, a file folder obese with charts; each picked up, inspected without interest; each returned, strayed from its place. "No. Not really. She didn't seem-- she seemed coherent." The word drops off, heavy as stone. Pale eyes glance up. "What else?"
Rodgers's reply -- report, story, as he requested -- is pure clinician, a master's work of clipped words in cool sentences. "Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head. Didn't recover the bullet, but we got some fragments. Might be able to make a match if we're lucky. Post-mortem examination showed signs of a struggle, but nothing under her nails from her attackers: skin, hair, blood. They didn't clean the body before they dumped it, though. We're going through the clothing now for evidence of where she was held."
A pencil. Rossi picks it up. Pokes its tip at a fingerpad, denting the flesh. Puts it down. "They took her right off the street, somehow," he says absent-mindedly. Picks up a folder. Opens it up. Closes it. "No signs of break-in at her place or mine. Couldn't find her phone. Bruising?"
"Yes. Face, neck, arms -- look, Rossi," she interrupts herself, hugging her arms tighter in their cross over sterile, draped white. "Do you really want to hear all this? You saw the body already."
The glass-bright gaze blinks up, turning a mild, puzzled, empty look at the woman. Rossi picks up an envelope. Puts it down. "What else you got?"
For a long, pursed moment, Assistant Medical Examiner Rodgers looks at her visitor. Then she says, "She was pregnant. About six weeks. Maybe seven."
The hand dropped on the table stirs, fingers closing, fingers fisting. Chris stares at it. Says nothing.
Rodgers gives him a beat, then picks up the folder again and hands it over. Her clear-eyed gaze is not without compassion. "In case you want to read it yourself." Her throaty voice takes on professional concern. "She /was/ clean. Perfectly healthy. And she fought the bastards. She fought hard."
He accepts the file with his other hand, his left hand, and stares at it in turn without recognition before looking up. Intelligence -- /awareness/ -- glitters behind the widened eyes, framed in white and heart's-blood black. "Pregnant," he says. The word drags bloody across his throat. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." The word drops with a coin's slow silver spin between them. Rodgers recrosses her arms. "The blood tests, the physical exam -- yeah, I'm sure. I'm sorry, Detective Rossi."
"Six weeks." He says. The folder crackles in his hand, manila denting under his thumb. Absently, he adds, "She always was a bitch in a fight."
A papery smile touches Rodgers's lips. "Suited you to a T, then, didn't she?"
The corners of the man's mouth lift. A thin wraith of a smile. "You have no idea. --You done with her?" His gaze drifts around the room. "Can I--?"
"Go ahead," Rodgers says quietly, lifting her chin at the door back out, at the examination room waiting across the hall. "I'll send up the ballistics report and whatever we find with the clothing. Say hi to Beston for me."
"He's still got the hots for you," says Chris, tucking the report into his arm with a father's care for his child. The lazy stride stirs him, back towards the hallway and the waiting Malloy. Towards the waiting body, done with the indignity of violence. At the door he pauses, a hand on the panel, a glance for the ME. "Thanks, Rodgers. I owe you one."
Rodgers just flaps her hand at him on her turn towards the desk and its piles again: go. Not without compassion, still, and the smile stays with her lips, shadows bright eyes already focusing on the next report.
The door bangs behind Rossi, nudging him out into the hallway. Not without compassion. There is enough to spare for the living, here. He pauses in the corridor, eyes closing, lashes drawing black and sharp across the high cheekbones. Silence. He gathers it to himself like armor, shaping it to mortal flesh, bone, and will.
Malloy scrambles to his feet off the bench, cigarette twisting in his fingers. His mouth opens. Then closes. He sits back down and lets the other detective -- go.
The door across the hallway. It opens for an arm's push, gentle, gently, as though to prevent surprise in the room's occupants. As though they cared. Familiar territory, again: for Rossi, at least. For any detective in Homicide. He leaves Malloy behind, long forgotten and buried beneath revelation and anticipation.
Cool air breathes out and gathers him in, into the room, /the/ room, a room of more tile, more harsh light, more sterile and prickling scent. The occupants -- no, they don't mind, lying silent and still under their shrouding sheets (white, bright, shadowed in puddles and folds over cold limbs and faces). No one living welcomes Rossi into their domain, only the bodies: the brotherhood of the dead.
Too many bodies -- one night, every night, in New York City -- and even toe tags require a tally. He finds his way without a guide, reading each bare foot, checking each tag without hurry or regret. Four. Five. Six. Tabot. Kelsey. Morales. Taylor. White feet, he checks. The delicate bones that suggest femininity, the high arches, the fine, pale skin. He searches without expectation, touching one ice-chilled drape after another, random comfort for the indifferently sleeping--
Canto, Leah Hope.
He recognizes the foot before he even reads the tag, and pauses to wonder at that very recognition.
A white sheet covers this body, too, like the others, all the others; but there's a darkness, a stain, to the cowl over its head. Blood's shadow; blood's seep. The face is only a topology of fabric folds and cavities that smooths down over shoulders, breasts, ribcage, hips, knees, and the ankles at last, drained white above feet's flat wall.
He will not surrender his folder: his report of her death, his unborn child. He tucks it into the warmth of his body, hiding it from prying eyes. (As though they cared. As though she would, when all her secrets are lost.) A hand hovers over the terrain of face, those blunted peaks and valleys formed by the sheet's fall. It hesitates, weaving air over the blurred map -- then draws canvas away, peeling blood-stiffened sheeting away from head and throat.
The rustle of fabric is loud in the sterile room. The whisper of his breath is like thunder. Chris Rossi looks down at the empty face of his enemy, his lover, his love, and caresses a pale, bruised cheek. "Hey, Leah," he says gently. So gently. Mustn't wake her. (Don't wake.)
"I hear you had something to tell me."
[Log ends]
Rossi visits Scott at Xavier School to talk to him after Leah's death.
On his way out of Xavier's, Chris runs into Lazzaro and learns the other man is even more a freak than he knew.
Rossi has an interview with the Medical Examiner, and learns the results of Leah's autopsy.
The phone squeals in his pocket, and three other detectives, heading onto shift, check their coats. "Not mine," Ken says in passing.
John digs his cell out of his jeans and flicks it open. Bundles of socks drop on his head. He puffs out exasperation. "Beston."
It is Tucci that notices his face changing. He nudges Yamaguchi, who turns and looks, half in, half out of his holster.
"Yeah," Beston says to the person on the other end. "He's not-- he's supposed to be...."
And then, eyes closing, "Shit."
Tucci ambles to stand at Beston's shoulder, eyes falcon-bright. "What's up?"
"He probably already knows," John says. "I'll look. Stay there, Julia. I'll be right by."
"Julia?" asks Spiccati, a towel slung over his shoulders, still dripping from the shower. "Julia Rossi? You're too ugly to be tapping that fine ass." He is a model of ill-timed vulgarities.
"What's up?" Tucci asks again.
Beston tells them, and leaves.
In the locker room, the detectives look at each other, faces set. Tucci says it for them.
Fuck.
---
Breaking windows, like sleeping seated in an uncomfortable chair, is something done for a reason. Possibly an unstable reason, but a reason. Or so, Scott surmises, typing a summary out with frigid hands, it is to him. Everything done for a reason. And nonetheless, one could wish for a warmer, more rational penance, like teaching children in Africa. Almost. More rational penance, perhaps. More proactive. More reminders that one is Protestant, not Catholic and does not resort to scratchy wool and fur with the bristles turned inward. Helps no one. Type type, a summary of what? He's a creature of technicality and process in practice, not words. And the wind keeps whistling in and out of the window like a punctured lung. Scott wears nothing warmer than a polo.
Penance of a different sort drives the silent visitor up the corridor, a long, sleepless night written on the stark face. Det. Rossi strides at the heels of his guide, a nod to courtesy letting the younger, shorter legs trot just before his own blank-eyed pace; he chivies the boy like a wind, a black presence in overcoat and suit: disarmed, disinterested.
"Here," says the boy, pausing before Scott's door. He peers doubtfully over his shoulder at Professor Summer's guest, and shuffles away from the bite of cold under the wood. "This is his room. Do you want me to--"
The detective stares blindly at the door, and makes a fist. Thumps its knuckles in a knock. Civilized men do this, herald their approach. Knock. And then, by rote, wait.
Scott stops typing, suddenly embarrassed by Word and gooseflesh, and his awkward typing. But visitors. He knuckles the monitor off, rubs his arms briskly and uselessly, stands, and takes a quick and direct route toward the door. This is opened-- "Oh." Scott's glasses meet Rossi's eyes blankly. "Come in."
The little guide frets, bobbing with anxiety and protective something-or-another; he presses himself against the door frame, setting his piping voice up. "If you want me to /stay/, Professor Summers," he says, heroic in the face of the incomprehensible.
Det. Rossi -- Chris -- says nothing, accepting the invitation without comment or surprise. He feeds himself through the space, stepping into cold, into ice, into wind, and warms nothing.
"Not you," Scott says, unsmiling, to the guide, and the door clicks shut. His hand pauses on the doorknob, his fingers testing temperature and texture, before he decides and presses the button in the knob that will keep the door locked from the inside. He turns. "So."
His guest stands in the center of the room, straight-shouldered in his stance, regarding the broken window without interest: without curiosity, or remark. The wind tugs peevishly at his overcoat, flipping it wide over the empty holster; the pocket for the badge gapes like an empty eyesocket, missing its feral glitter. "Thought I'd come by," Rossi says, baritone husky and dispassionate.
"Good." Scott remains near the door, shoulders high and formal and both eyebrows and mouth set in flat, impassive lines, save for a small cleft beside the right eyebrow, almost raising it. "I wanted to apologize."
This earns a look. Clear, green, distant-- "Don't."
Scott's eyebrow does raise, a touch. His lips part cautiously in a pause before he speaks. "Very well."
"There's nothing to--" Rossi's mouth thins, those fine, sybarite lips folding over the words, sliding askew. Somewhere in there is the parody of a smile. "You got a God complex, Summers. You don't have anything to apologize for."
Both eyebrows draw in and darken the space between brow and glasses, but the tension is momentary and Scott's face releases itself, not into relaxation, but into a fall. "I got cocky," he says, quietly.
The detective stirs, sharply, and stills. The fine, strong face redraws itself in a duller mask. "Magneto didn't get her."
"Magneto never cared enough." Scott puffs a laugh. "He's an old man. Malice and whim unless he forgets and turns grandfather."
"Tell that to my surgeon," says Rossi, watching the aftermath of breath with a blank-eyed, blind-eyed curiosity. Shoulders lift under the heavy coat, marking slow, endless time. "Anyway. He didn't get her."
"No. And what's a little shrapnel to us? Magneto is merciful." Scott's second puffed laugh is brittle and brief. "We're all still alive."
Most of us. Mordant humor. The corner of Rossi's mouth dips into shadow, tugged awry. "Yeah," he says instead, and turns back a little to look, once more, at that broken window. "You guys hunting him?"
"He's an old man." Scott turns his chin in a constricted, partial shake of his head. "What's the use? More men killed in a strike operation he'll undo in a month? Free again. That one breaks his cage every time. Let him dodder and die of a heart attack. Any day."
"I don't want Pezhead," Chris Rossi tells the wind. "I want the Friends."
"Me too."
"All I want for Christmas." The black head turns; the profile shows itself, etched in sharp, aching lines against the light. "Think you can arrange that, Poodle King?"
Another laugh and this one is long and throat-scraping dry. When it finishes, Scott's chin juts and the left lens of his glasses mirror the window in red. "What can I give you? A few names you already know, probably false. Leads you already have. I lead a strike team. Intelligence isn't my area. All I know are field tactics and trigonometry. I'm a tool. But give me an address, and I'll help you hunt."
The detective jerks a little, the barest shiver in the long, tight frame. Breath weaves a disappearing halo around the turn of his head: back, away, around again to sweep the room in a meaningless, incurious glance. "I'm off the case, but the Friends -- I can find some names. Get you going. Who does your intelligence? Someone's got to point you in the right direction. The Feds? Spooks? Who's holds /your/ leash, Summers?"
Scott jerks his chin higher and his glasses mirror nothing. "A pair of telepaths. Lowest level of command above me. They do the intelligence. Too much data and a programmed thing like me can't function. Poodle King. Hah. Point and tell me where to go. That's how it works."
"Grey," says Rossi, unease an unfinished shape beneath the name.
"She's one," Scott says, his voice dropping to a mere scratch. "I rank her in the field. She does considerably better than me anywhere else."
"Who else?"
"Xavier, of course."
Of course. Rossi nods. Nods, while a breeze punctuates revelation by perching on his shoulder and whispering in his ear. "So," he says. "Will they help?"
"Can't allow terrorism. Besides, they're only my /direct/ superiors, right?" Scott's eyes shut behind his glasses, causing a loosening of the severe eyebrows. "Someone will take care of it. The orders."
"Someone." Rossi -- almost -- smiles. "It's your patriotic duty."
"Of course. But, of course, I can only do my patriotic duty with orders."
"We'll find some." We'll make some. Green skips away, unfocused again, distracted. "Friends--"
"--deserve a fair trial in a court of law, with as few injuries incurred during capture as possible," Scott recites, low and dull. His eyes pull back open.
Det. Rossi says to the wall, the winter, the ear of God, "Fair trial. Right." The baritone rasps a little, its nap rubbed back to show darker color. He turns, shoulders tight once more, drifting into motion: towards the door, and the hallway beyond. "Anyway. I thought I'd check up on you. Make sure you were okay."
"Thanks. But I'm never anything to worry about." Scott raises his hand toward the knob, but it stops, fingers only half outstretched. "And you?"
The leaf-dyed gaze sweeps up, as opaque as ruby crystal. He lies with his eyes. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm just fine."
Scott's lip quirks up. "Of course. We can't be touched." His hand closes on the door knob and unlocks it with the press of a thumb.
"Teflon," says Rossi, and steps aside to give it room to open. "I'll call you when I find something. When I find some leads."
Scott turns the knob to the side and draws the door back. Hall's exposed. "Thanks."
Det. Rossi leaves. No farewells. The shambling stride bears him down the corridor, heavy tread crushing the cold beneath its feet.
Scott shuts the door after him and depresses the lock. Still has gooseflesh on his arms.
---
Cold wraps its arms around Det. Rossi, thin comfort, thinner armor. The hallways of the faculty residences disgorge him, unarmed, badge a plucked tooth under the heavy black of overcoat. Exhaustion. The still face shows its signs, in the shadows and strains that sketch the skull under skin; he bears his mood with him, a thing of angles and opaque planes that drives students out of his path with startled eyes and -- for the more psychically sensitive -- blinding, buffeting pain.
TGIF. He steps into the lobby and pauses there, eyes hooded and blank.
Vincent, in turn, is in a more characteristic state of semi-exhaustion, the stubble that colors his jaw indicative of his lack of interest in getting up early enough to shave /and/ be here on time. That was three hours ago. Now he's here, and on his way out - a damp white towel slung over the shoulder of his leather jacket. The grey t-shirt beneath the jacket is somewhat more damp. Particularly around the armpit and chest regions. Past Rossi, down the lobby's length - eyes down on the iPod he's currently fumbling with.
Sightless eyes track stranger movement than the smaller, slighter sprites that infest the school. The pale gaze follows; the laggard mind, still swathed in the previous night's wool, wakes and pushes intelligence back into its throne. "Lazzaro." Puzzled, that, a name out of place. Rossi stirs and takes a step. "Hey."
A familiar voice. Not entirely sure whether or not he just heard his name, Vincent hesitates, head lifting away from his ongoing struggle to locate a perfect level of volume. His thumb mashes the pause button, and the right earphone is extracted as he turns to squint at the probable source of that voice behind him.
Face to face. Chris Rossi regards the smaller man without curiosity, the memory of the night past a breathing thing under his mask. Hands plow into pockets, shaping the coat's lines wide and taut, away from the sag of suit: last night's clothes, last night's fatigue. "Lazzaro," he says again, without inflection. His gaze roams across Vincent's body, reading those telltale signs of exertion -- and then traces its way back up, to meet brown eyes with green.
Vincent stiffens - brows tilting up, and then abruptly down again. His right hand stays right where it is, holding an earphone at jaw level. His eyes have very little to say, aside from saying that he maybe isn't all that happy to see Rossi here. Aaah. If only his mutation involved Jedi mind tricks. "Er...Rossi."
Det. Rossi rocks a little, adjusting weight here, there, here again on the rudders of his heels. The brush of his overcoat slips against his pants legs, soothing, idle whispers -- gossip -- under the curl of adolescent voices. "Lazzaro," he bats back, baritone bland. Incurious, even. Black lashes sweep low, a lattice to sliver and splinter his inspection. "Hey."
This isn't what it looks like. What does it look like? Maybe it looks like he had a date with Jean Grey. Vincent turns the rest of the way to face Rossi and tugs the second earphone out - the cord looped around the back of his neck and dropped. He's starting to sweat again. "Hey."
Shiny, so shiny, perspiration on skin. Rossi's skin is cold and dry, a dark mold carved out and left hollow. "How's it going?" he asks, drifting detached interest across the other man: his iPod, his towel, his sweat-grimed shirt.
Maybe he's distracted by Leah being dead. God, that's a shitty thing to think. Vincent's brows twitch even further downward at his own line of thought. "Oh. You know. Just..."
"Doing a little training?" asks Rossi, mild.
Vincent's jaw muscles tighten visibly. He lifts his free hand to rub the back of it over his brow, temporarily clearing the sheen that's been gathering there. "Listen, Chris-"
Chris's eyes widen slightly to show the frame of white around the green, just shy of mockery. His head tilts; black droops jagged feathers across the wide brow. Patience settles the man, a heavy shroud. He is listening. /Speak/.
Nnn. Vincent draws in a deep, uneasy breath - wary. Untrusting. It's becoming difficult to think through the cold knot turning slowly over in his guts. "I..." Forcing Rossi off the case. Conflict of interest. Shit, shit, shit. "Nobody knows about this."
"Yeah?" says Chris, betraying nothing. The waiting eyes watch, unblinking, something cold and clinical looking through them. "Nobody?"
"These people," Vincent corrects after a few seconds of hesitation. And then, "Melcross," after a few seconds more. "Melcross was an accident. That night we were drinking, I did it on accident."
"Melcross." A shadow -- a glimpse of some unformed, darkling thing -- moves behind Rossi's face, gone before it can be recognized and named. Eyebrows twitch together, digging the thinnest of wrinkles. "And?"
"That's it. My parents knew."
"And now me."
"And now you."
"So." The word spins out flat, humorless. "Now what?"
"It isn't dangerous. I'm not...dangerous. It can't hurt anyone."
The look Rossi gives Vincent is odd, if unreadable still. Hesitation pauses the Brooklyn baritone; the smallest, barbed edge of uncertainty splits the cryptic expression. "Show me."
"There's a noise." Vincent supplies, the way he's eyeing Rossi having changed very little. If anything, the look in his eyes is a little more nervous than it was. "It can be loud."
Chris shrugs. The arms, their hands locked into coat pockets, straighten into the shrug. Indifference. Acceptance. "So there's noise," he says, voice neutral. "It going to break any windows? My eardrums?"
"No." Still rigid, Vincent swallows and looks away. THUNK. Where the detective was, a tenuous cloud of dark smoke curls. THUNK. Behind Rossi, he reppears an instant later, iPod still in hand - the same substance furling black around his shoulders. "Tada."
The back facing Vincent is hard and tight, muscle bunched around the march of spine. For a moment longer Rossi stands as he is, head cocked, body drawn in sharp, penned lines. Then he turns, half-way, scything a look at Vincent over the slope of his shoulder. "Oh," he says, simply. "You're a mutant."
Rossi's look is met with one that would be dry if he was a little more certain that Rossi was kidding. "I'm a criminal investigator. If this gets out, my job is gone."
Fine skin tightens over the line of jaw, and jumps across the skip of pulse in the line of Rossi's throat. "I don't out people," he says, baritone abruptly harsh. "I don't screw over my partners." Chris swings away, setting his stride towards the great lobby doors and the open porch beyond. Heels dig a metronome's rhythm on the polished floor.
"No shit." Vincent snaps after him, the heel of his hand already digging into the bridge of his nose. Fuck.
The door slams open in misplaced violence. It has weathered worse, at the hands of enthusiastic youth. Cold floods the lobby, diving into the mansion on the back of an eager, jubilant wind. It flings Chris's coat skirts wide, flapping them in a murder of crow black; the detective stalks outside, stride driving bullets into the wooden slats.
Vincent squeezes his eyes shut, and doesn't open them or alter his position until he realizes that he feels eyes on his back, and turns to scowl moodily at an owl-eyed Jones. "Piss off, kid." A slow turn executed, Vincent paces for the door only after plenty of time has passed for Rossi to vanish.
---
The city morgue is a quiet place, a basement of tiled walls and floors, of antiseptic coolth and buzzing white overhead lights. Detective (First Grade) Pat Malloy, veteran whippet son of Ireland's auld soil, sits on a bench outside one of the main examination rooms and plays with a cigarette in his hands, between the braced spread of his knees, under the hunch of his dark head. He glances up at the door in front of him -- closed -- then at the clock on the wall beside it -- ticking towards midnight -- and goes back to turning the cigarette over and over blunted, delicate fingers.
The door cribs open, yawning sleepily to a hand's push. Slips shut. Rocks, contemplating itself and its partner. Opens again -- and lets Chris Rossi in, Det. Rossi, Homicide, Mutant Affairs, son of Sgt. Rossi, brother of Officer, of Detective--
Black coat, black hair, seamless mood and unlettered face. The door mourns on its close behind him, gusting regret across the tall frame. Clear eyes, tired, find Pat in his seat and recognize him, placing him in history and context. They tighten at their corners, dying green darker color. But. "--Malloy." The Brooklyn-scored baritone is rough and unpracticed, creaky from disuse.
"Hey." Malloy stands on the word, raises tired eyes to the taller man's. The cigarette goes into his leather jacket's pocket. Then his hands do, each to each, to rest there like small tense animals. "Just wanted to say -- well. I heard."
Rossi nods. Simple enough acknowledgment, resting the frayed voice and its weary throat. He crosses the floor on a low-swung stride, feet scuffing the sterile floor in its path. One hand offers itself. Greeting, between men: respect, between colleagues. "Thanks, for--" Rough, rough, that rasp over raw vocal cords. The detective hesitates, and reclaims discipline. "The other night. Thanks."
Hand meets hand, and Malloy's grip is firm. Holds a bit. Lets go. "Yeah," he says softly, with an out-of-towner's cleanness: a home somewhere further north, further inland. He tips a shrug, rolls his head to the door next to his bench, then looks back at Rossi. "Anytime, man. You know that. She was--" Another break. Another shrug. "She was a good one. I'm sorry."
A good one. Rossi's glance at Malloy is faintly quizzical. "Depends on who you talk to," he says, like the ghost of an old, weatherworn joke. It scrapes over the urban landscape, a sham of amusement. He tucks his hand back into his pocket and leaves it there, solid, round, out of sight. Useless. "So."
"So." Pat Malloy finds quiet comfort, respite, in the repetition. He studies his scuffed wingtips. He looks up. His face is careworn, weary, concerned. Unsure. "Rodgers -- she's been waitin' for you. In there." Jerk of head at the door beside him. "If you want me to wait around . . ."
"It's your case," says Rossi, his gaze finding the door and clinging there, leashed. A ribbon of bitterness threads through the reminder, skeining the acknowledgment in faint, unconscious resentment. "I don't want to step on your toes." And yet. He shifts his weight, turning towards it, towards the waiting woman. Women--
Malloy rolls his eyes at that and adopts a lofty sort of growl: what a boy from Vermont's sawmill country would throw at a Brooklyn raptor ruffling his feathers, sharpening his beak. "Get the fuck in the room, asshole. My toes are fine. If I need to worry about them, I will absolutely let you know. Okay?"
In lighter times, there would be a grin for that. Reciprocal mockery, companionable or challenging. Tonight, Rossi simply nods, shuttling the other man a shuttered, unreadable glance before the waiting Rodgers (terrible yearning, terrible reluctance) is answered. A shoulder serves to knock the door open. His fists -- his impotent, ineffectual hands -- stay couched and hidden.
The woman standing next to her desk in the small, crowded, cold office glances up from the manila folder in her hands. She's red-haired, average, whetted like an axe with gimlet eyes and pale, firm lips. "Detective," she greets him, and some of her face's austere hauteur softens, just for that naming moment. Then she's brisk, and she's business. "Come in. Just got the toxicology report back."
"Tell me a story, Rodgers," Rossi says back, a grim caricature of his usual self. "What, was she on heroin? Cocaine? Little alien crystals from Mars?" The twist of lips greets her, fracturing that lucite mask for a moment's break before it settles again: face, expression, unemotional professionalism. Cop eyes. Dead eyes. "Rush job?"
"No, no, no, and yeah, no kidding, on a case like this." Rodgers awls him with a dry look and snaps the folder shut. Tosses it onto the desk and its lo, so many piles of others. She folds her arms over her white lab coat and judges him with a slight tilt of chin, tip of head. "She wasn't on anything. Clean as a whistle. You expecting otherwise?"
Det. Rossi idles next to the examiner's desk, untucking hands to be the Devil's work: a pen, a stapler, a file folder obese with charts; each picked up, inspected without interest; each returned, strayed from its place. "No. Not really. She didn't seem-- she seemed coherent." The word drops off, heavy as stone. Pale eyes glance up. "What else?"
Rodgers's reply -- report, story, as he requested -- is pure clinician, a master's work of clipped words in cool sentences. "Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head. Didn't recover the bullet, but we got some fragments. Might be able to make a match if we're lucky. Post-mortem examination showed signs of a struggle, but nothing under her nails from her attackers: skin, hair, blood. They didn't clean the body before they dumped it, though. We're going through the clothing now for evidence of where she was held."
A pencil. Rossi picks it up. Pokes its tip at a fingerpad, denting the flesh. Puts it down. "They took her right off the street, somehow," he says absent-mindedly. Picks up a folder. Opens it up. Closes it. "No signs of break-in at her place or mine. Couldn't find her phone. Bruising?"
"Yes. Face, neck, arms -- look, Rossi," she interrupts herself, hugging her arms tighter in their cross over sterile, draped white. "Do you really want to hear all this? You saw the body already."
The glass-bright gaze blinks up, turning a mild, puzzled, empty look at the woman. Rossi picks up an envelope. Puts it down. "What else you got?"
For a long, pursed moment, Assistant Medical Examiner Rodgers looks at her visitor. Then she says, "She was pregnant. About six weeks. Maybe seven."
The hand dropped on the table stirs, fingers closing, fingers fisting. Chris stares at it. Says nothing.
Rodgers gives him a beat, then picks up the folder again and hands it over. Her clear-eyed gaze is not without compassion. "In case you want to read it yourself." Her throaty voice takes on professional concern. "She /was/ clean. Perfectly healthy. And she fought the bastards. She fought hard."
He accepts the file with his other hand, his left hand, and stares at it in turn without recognition before looking up. Intelligence -- /awareness/ -- glitters behind the widened eyes, framed in white and heart's-blood black. "Pregnant," he says. The word drags bloody across his throat. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." The word drops with a coin's slow silver spin between them. Rodgers recrosses her arms. "The blood tests, the physical exam -- yeah, I'm sure. I'm sorry, Detective Rossi."
"Six weeks." He says. The folder crackles in his hand, manila denting under his thumb. Absently, he adds, "She always was a bitch in a fight."
A papery smile touches Rodgers's lips. "Suited you to a T, then, didn't she?"
The corners of the man's mouth lift. A thin wraith of a smile. "You have no idea. --You done with her?" His gaze drifts around the room. "Can I--?"
"Go ahead," Rodgers says quietly, lifting her chin at the door back out, at the examination room waiting across the hall. "I'll send up the ballistics report and whatever we find with the clothing. Say hi to Beston for me."
"He's still got the hots for you," says Chris, tucking the report into his arm with a father's care for his child. The lazy stride stirs him, back towards the hallway and the waiting Malloy. Towards the waiting body, done with the indignity of violence. At the door he pauses, a hand on the panel, a glance for the ME. "Thanks, Rodgers. I owe you one."
Rodgers just flaps her hand at him on her turn towards the desk and its piles again: go. Not without compassion, still, and the smile stays with her lips, shadows bright eyes already focusing on the next report.
The door bangs behind Rossi, nudging him out into the hallway. Not without compassion. There is enough to spare for the living, here. He pauses in the corridor, eyes closing, lashes drawing black and sharp across the high cheekbones. Silence. He gathers it to himself like armor, shaping it to mortal flesh, bone, and will.
Malloy scrambles to his feet off the bench, cigarette twisting in his fingers. His mouth opens. Then closes. He sits back down and lets the other detective -- go.
The door across the hallway. It opens for an arm's push, gentle, gently, as though to prevent surprise in the room's occupants. As though they cared. Familiar territory, again: for Rossi, at least. For any detective in Homicide. He leaves Malloy behind, long forgotten and buried beneath revelation and anticipation.
Cool air breathes out and gathers him in, into the room, /the/ room, a room of more tile, more harsh light, more sterile and prickling scent. The occupants -- no, they don't mind, lying silent and still under their shrouding sheets (white, bright, shadowed in puddles and folds over cold limbs and faces). No one living welcomes Rossi into their domain, only the bodies: the brotherhood of the dead.
Too many bodies -- one night, every night, in New York City -- and even toe tags require a tally. He finds his way without a guide, reading each bare foot, checking each tag without hurry or regret. Four. Five. Six. Tabot. Kelsey. Morales. Taylor. White feet, he checks. The delicate bones that suggest femininity, the high arches, the fine, pale skin. He searches without expectation, touching one ice-chilled drape after another, random comfort for the indifferently sleeping--
Canto, Leah Hope.
He recognizes the foot before he even reads the tag, and pauses to wonder at that very recognition.
A white sheet covers this body, too, like the others, all the others; but there's a darkness, a stain, to the cowl over its head. Blood's shadow; blood's seep. The face is only a topology of fabric folds and cavities that smooths down over shoulders, breasts, ribcage, hips, knees, and the ankles at last, drained white above feet's flat wall.
He will not surrender his folder: his report of her death, his unborn child. He tucks it into the warmth of his body, hiding it from prying eyes. (As though they cared. As though she would, when all her secrets are lost.) A hand hovers over the terrain of face, those blunted peaks and valleys formed by the sheet's fall. It hesitates, weaving air over the blurred map -- then draws canvas away, peeling blood-stiffened sheeting away from head and throat.
The rustle of fabric is loud in the sterile room. The whisper of his breath is like thunder. Chris Rossi looks down at the empty face of his enemy, his lover, his love, and caresses a pale, bruised cheek. "Hey, Leah," he says gently. So gently. Mustn't wake her. (Don't wake.)
"I hear you had something to tell me."
[Log ends]
Rossi visits Scott at Xavier School to talk to him after Leah's death.
On his way out of Xavier's, Chris runs into Lazzaro and learns the other man is even more a freak than he knew.
Rossi has an interview with the Medical Examiner, and learns the results of Leah's autopsy.