XOVER: Reconstructing Family (1/1)
Reconstructing Family (ATS/FK/SG1 Xover) (1/1)
by LJ
Spoilers: For ATS, Epiphany; for FK, Last Knight; for SG1, Covenant
Summary: Kate Lockley, in a bar in New Orleans, solving a family mystery.
Kate Lockley remembers that funeral - three years before the insanity that became her life - and how it rained that day. There was no real feeling of closure, though, when all those people from across the continent came together to remember two people gone missing and presumed dead. One she hadn't known at all, only heard rumors of him and a few brief mentions over the telephone, and the other she'd only rarely seen, but would recognize anywhere.
Like right now.
At the time, she had believed the police findings without question, noting the precision, the professionalism of the reports, glad to see that the police there were living up to her personal standards as an officer. There had been no other interpretation possible. She had been allowed to read the whole file, everything, every bit of evidence, strange as it all was, seemingly incomplete as it was. But now she's seen a bit more of the world, and of the world hidden from mortal eyes, and the less likely explanations for the lack of bodies, the lack of evidence and all the strangeness of the victims' lives all make sense now. Now she knows the truth - or some facsimile of it.
Because right now, right this second, in a little Goth bar in New Orleans, she's staring at her dead cousin Natalie Lambert, laughing with her equally dead boyfriend Nick Knight, drinking red wine.
For someone who's supposed to be dead, Natalie is surprisingly lively. Her long curly hair is styled with more care than Kate's accustomed to associating with Natalie, but then bookworms and night-shift coroners aren't valued for their coifing capabilities. Her dress is also unlike the Natalie that Kate remembers, but not inappropriate for a night on the town with her man. And the man... The pictures at the funeral - well, memorial service, really, since there hadn't been bodies, the reason for which being now clear that they weren't dead after all - hadn't done Detective Nicholas B. Knight justice. Admittedly, blond and blue-eyed isn't her type - hence some of the pain of the Angel debacle (she'd always gone for those brown/brown guys) - but even she had say that Knight had been nice to look at. In person, at this distance across the bar, he is strikingly handsome.
And drinking the same red wine as Natalie and half the visitors to this particular nightspot.
Kate had left Los Angeles in the hopes of getting away from the supernatural events that were haunting her - vampires, demons, her near-death experience. But soon any vestige of a normal life had disappeared. She knows that demons exist, she knows the trademarks of some, and in particular she has learned the ways of vampires, the vampires who congregate together in the older cities, the older vampires who try their best to remain hidden. And one of the things she's noticed is the way of vampires in bars, the red wine they drink that isn't wine at all, and the flash of eyes in the smoky darkness.
Her cousin's body was never discovered because a demon took possession of it and took it from the scene of the crime. The question that remains, however, is how Nick Knight fits into the equation.
She continues to watch the vampires. In her head she still uses their human names to identify each of them, but already she's severed the connection in her mind between who they were and what they now are. Natalie finishes her glass of wine and shares a kiss with Nick. They look happy. Kate doesn't remember the last time she saw Natalie happy, truly, truly happy, but considering the last time she saw her cousin, Natalie's brother Richard had recently died, it's not that surprising. It is only unfortunate that Natalie's soul isn't still on earth to experience that kind of happiness, but she supposes that if there's a hell, then there must be a heaven, too, and surely anything her cousin's soul is experiencing in heaven must beat what's possible on earth.
The hellish duo leave after exchanging a few brief words with the bartender - who is also a vampire, the way he keeps sampling the red. The skirt of Natalie's little dress swishes this way and that, drawing attention to her short but shapely legs and the strappy heels they end in - yet more evidence that the real Natalie is nowhere to be found in that undead body. Even before her knee injury, her cousin had battled against such footwear and clothing, just as Kate had, battled against the objectification of the female form. It was one of the few things - aside from their interest in police work - that the cousins had ever had in common.
It's summertime, warm and a little muggy as it often is in the South, but Kate pulls her light jacket on anyway. It has a high collar and if nothing else, it means that the vampires will have one more little layer to get through before reaching her neck. Natalie and Nick venture out, of course, in what they were wearing in the bar, skimpy as Natalie's dress is, and as thin as Nick's shirt is. Kate follows them, block after block, as they appear to the rest of the world as just a nice couple out for a late walk after their evening's entertainment. They could be anyone, tourists or locals, lovers or newly acquainted, to the outside world, but Kate knows better. They are vampires. Vampires who know each other quite well.
She's not entirely certain who sired who, or that it even matters, but the matter of their disappearance from Toronto does prompt a few questions. At the service, she'd overheard stories about Nick Knight and all the weird things about him that lend themselves to gossip. She'd heard about his allergy to sunlight, his lack of interest in social events, his strange home which had doubled as the crime scene. This all made it likely that Nick had already been a vampire, but how had that worked? How on earth had a vampire managed to become a police detective? Angel's less than legal attempt at freelance detective work had been one thing; actual police work would be something entirely different. And why would a vampire be interested in that kind of work anyway? Angel had made it pretty clear to her that he was the only one even vaguely interested in good. None of it makes sense. Clearly Nick had simply been a strange guy, a guy who had happened to have one of those rare diseases where sunlight makes the person sick, and who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They must have become vampires at the same time.
Not that it matters all that much, Kate muses to herself. A vampire is a vampire is bait for a demon hunter like herself.
Nick whispers something in Natalie's ear and Kate wonders what he's said. Near the end of the block, the pair turns into an alley. Cautiously, Kate follows, her trusty stake drawn from her jacket's inside pocket, her tiny bottles of holy water at the ready in the outside pockets. She's learned fighting skills never touched on at the police academy since her departure from the City of Lost Angels and she has a good idea of how vampires (on the rare occasions they hunt in pairs or packs) plan their attacks on unsuspecting mortals.
This is not going by plan.
The pair simply stand and look at her, at first wordlessly, taking in her raised hand, clutching the stake. Natalie looks at her in confusion.
But most striking, they do not attack. Their faces, their eyes do not change. They do not bare their fangs, do not take a predatory stance. It is as if they do not think her dangerous.
Natalie takes a step forward, whispering Kate's full name, as if surprised or shocked to see her human host's cousin, almost as if by approaching Kate in this way, she'll take her by surprise. But Kate is not so easily fooled. She could not save her father, and there are innumerable victims she has not been able to save from vampires over the last couple of years, but if there is one thing she will do, out of respect for her cousin's memory, she will stake this monster and send it back to the hell from whence it came.
Cautiously, pretending to be taken in by Natalie's innocent facade, Kate approaches. She lowers the stake, but her grip is still strong on it and she tightens it still. She comes close enough to be embraced by the thing that was once her cousin and before any word can pass Natalie's unnaturally bright lips, she does it:
She plunges the stake into the monster's heart.
Natalie gasps - but remains solid. Where is the dust, and the unholy screams of death that Kate is now accustomed to when the wood reaches the innermost spot of the creature's heart? She steps back, waiting for that moment when the body turns suddenly to dust, but does not come. And before she can try again, the monster that is Nick Knight is at Natalie's side, taking the stake from her chest and gently lowering her to the ground.
Kate is not entirely prepared for two vampires this evening, having only one stake and that one is currently in Nick's hand, being drawn from Natalie's heart. In the past, one stake has been enough for as many as three vampires in a night, so long as she remembers to pull back just before it turns to dust along with the demon itself. But she no longer has that stake, only her little bottles of holy water and the cross necklace that she wears hidden underneath her shirt.
She steps back, a little in shock. She's never really staked someone she's known before. Granted, Natalie is no longer her crazy Canadian older cousin, the one who would talk her into playing tricks on the others during those summer visits to their common grandmother. She's dead now; this is nothing but a shell, a demon.
Nick murmurs something to Natalie, laying on the ground, but Kate cannot hear the actual words. She's gone deaf, the world is soundless, mute. She can't even hear her own heart, isn't certain it's still beating. In a moment, in a single second, Nick is now beside her, his eyes glowing a little, his lips moving but still she cannot hear what he is saying. There is pain in her arms where his strong - demonically strong - hands have gripped her, pain in her mind as if he's drilling into it with his eyes. She fights, fights, fights against it but in the end she loses. The world falls into a fog, something she hasn't experienced since that night when she nearly died.
When the fog clears, for just the faintest of moments, she imagines she's back in that apartment in LA, with Angel trying to wake her, damp and shivering, but it passes and she is alone. She's not sure what's happened; it takes a few moments to be able to sit, let alone stand, and what she sees puzzles her: a few scattered but still full bottles of holy water, her stake - blood stained! - resting on the dirty ground. Slowly, she remembers that she's in New Orleans, that she had planned an evening at a couple of the questionable bars that she thinks might be covers for vampire havens.
Minutes pass; it's late, late in the evening and there is little artificial light around her. The sky is clear and the stars are bright. It's a surreal feeling.
Clearly something has happened here, she tells herself as she finally stands up and makes her way out of the alley. She leaves the stake there - fewer questions to ask if she's stopped by the local police - but tucks the holy water into her pockets just to be safe. She isn't ready to wonder what actually happened to her, though it has to have been somewhat supernatural. She wasn't mugged - her wallet is still intact, proven by the fact that she has enough money to pay for the first taxi she comes across, two blocks away - and she definitely hasn't been raped. In fact, physically, she feels fine, albeit a little sluggish and tired.
In her hotel room, she falls into a deep sleep, awoken only by the sunlight shining through the west-facing window in the late afternoon. She's awake, alert, thinking now, but she can't figure it out. She's too weirded out by the situation and decides, almost instantaneously, to leave town. New Orleans will always be here in the future if she ever plucks up enough courage to return. At the very least, she's never read the collected works of Anne Rice, so she knows it's something real that's causing her discomfort, her unease, her blackout last night, and not some dreamy remnant of some horror novel. She gathers her things together, checks out of the hotel, grabs a hamburger from a drive-thru and heads west for Texas.
Just as she crosses the border into the lone-star state, her thoughts inexplicably turn to her family. She remembers her father, the vague memories of her mother. She recalls her grandmother, whose house had been home during the Augusts of her childhood, where she saw her far-scattered cousins. She hasn't thought of her family in ages, not since her father died back when she was thrust so suddenly into the world of the supernatural.
Inexplicably, her thoughts turn to her cousin Natalie, who'd disappeared a couple of years before then, and she wonders what Nat Lambert, skeptic extraordinaire, would make of vampires and demons and all the things that go bump in the night. If anyone could resist believing in those things, it probably would have been her. She wonders what it would have taken for Natalie to believe, to accept that the world Kate now lives in is real, and not a delusion.
She fiddles with the radio and listens to the late-night news report. She laughs at the story along with the anchor - aliens? This Alec Coleson fellow sounds like he's got a few screws loose. After a few moments' contemplation, she realizes that the guy might be mistaken: not aliens, but demons of some kind. There have been a few that could be mistaken for little gray men. Or even little green men. She stretches her short-term memory, trying to remember the details of the report so far. Coleson is claiming that the Air Force knows something about the aliens...
The anchor continues, saying that the Air Force has denied all knowledge of aliens and in fact claims that Coleson was peddling some kind of prototype hologram. Kate swerves briefly when she recognizes the voice of the Air Force spokesman - spokeswoman - explaining the details - another family relation, another person she hasn't see since the beginning of time. And the plan is already set:
A few days in Fort Worth, to check out those leads she'd gotten in Atlanta. A day in Roswell, just for the heck of it. She's always wanted to visit it out of plain morbid curiosity. And then north, to Colorado Springs and to Sam, who'd hopefully have a couch free for her. It’s the least she can do, considering she'd had to cancel coming to Kate's father's funeral at the last minute, citing something to do with national security.
As Kate pulls into the parking lot of her next hotel - a chain whose name she actually recognizes - she puzzles momentarily over that little memory, the brief phone message from Sam those years ago. There's something bizarre about it, and then as she pays for the room, it hits her:
What does an astrophysicist have to do with national security?
[fin]
by LJ
Spoilers: For ATS, Epiphany; for FK, Last Knight; for SG1, Covenant
Summary: Kate Lockley, in a bar in New Orleans, solving a family mystery.
Kate Lockley remembers that funeral - three years before the insanity that became her life - and how it rained that day. There was no real feeling of closure, though, when all those people from across the continent came together to remember two people gone missing and presumed dead. One she hadn't known at all, only heard rumors of him and a few brief mentions over the telephone, and the other she'd only rarely seen, but would recognize anywhere.
Like right now.
At the time, she had believed the police findings without question, noting the precision, the professionalism of the reports, glad to see that the police there were living up to her personal standards as an officer. There had been no other interpretation possible. She had been allowed to read the whole file, everything, every bit of evidence, strange as it all was, seemingly incomplete as it was. But now she's seen a bit more of the world, and of the world hidden from mortal eyes, and the less likely explanations for the lack of bodies, the lack of evidence and all the strangeness of the victims' lives all make sense now. Now she knows the truth - or some facsimile of it.
Because right now, right this second, in a little Goth bar in New Orleans, she's staring at her dead cousin Natalie Lambert, laughing with her equally dead boyfriend Nick Knight, drinking red wine.
For someone who's supposed to be dead, Natalie is surprisingly lively. Her long curly hair is styled with more care than Kate's accustomed to associating with Natalie, but then bookworms and night-shift coroners aren't valued for their coifing capabilities. Her dress is also unlike the Natalie that Kate remembers, but not inappropriate for a night on the town with her man. And the man... The pictures at the funeral - well, memorial service, really, since there hadn't been bodies, the reason for which being now clear that they weren't dead after all - hadn't done Detective Nicholas B. Knight justice. Admittedly, blond and blue-eyed isn't her type - hence some of the pain of the Angel debacle (she'd always gone for those brown/brown guys) - but even she had say that Knight had been nice to look at. In person, at this distance across the bar, he is strikingly handsome.
And drinking the same red wine as Natalie and half the visitors to this particular nightspot.
Kate had left Los Angeles in the hopes of getting away from the supernatural events that were haunting her - vampires, demons, her near-death experience. But soon any vestige of a normal life had disappeared. She knows that demons exist, she knows the trademarks of some, and in particular she has learned the ways of vampires, the vampires who congregate together in the older cities, the older vampires who try their best to remain hidden. And one of the things she's noticed is the way of vampires in bars, the red wine they drink that isn't wine at all, and the flash of eyes in the smoky darkness.
Her cousin's body was never discovered because a demon took possession of it and took it from the scene of the crime. The question that remains, however, is how Nick Knight fits into the equation.
She continues to watch the vampires. In her head she still uses their human names to identify each of them, but already she's severed the connection in her mind between who they were and what they now are. Natalie finishes her glass of wine and shares a kiss with Nick. They look happy. Kate doesn't remember the last time she saw Natalie happy, truly, truly happy, but considering the last time she saw her cousin, Natalie's brother Richard had recently died, it's not that surprising. It is only unfortunate that Natalie's soul isn't still on earth to experience that kind of happiness, but she supposes that if there's a hell, then there must be a heaven, too, and surely anything her cousin's soul is experiencing in heaven must beat what's possible on earth.
The hellish duo leave after exchanging a few brief words with the bartender - who is also a vampire, the way he keeps sampling the red. The skirt of Natalie's little dress swishes this way and that, drawing attention to her short but shapely legs and the strappy heels they end in - yet more evidence that the real Natalie is nowhere to be found in that undead body. Even before her knee injury, her cousin had battled against such footwear and clothing, just as Kate had, battled against the objectification of the female form. It was one of the few things - aside from their interest in police work - that the cousins had ever had in common.
It's summertime, warm and a little muggy as it often is in the South, but Kate pulls her light jacket on anyway. It has a high collar and if nothing else, it means that the vampires will have one more little layer to get through before reaching her neck. Natalie and Nick venture out, of course, in what they were wearing in the bar, skimpy as Natalie's dress is, and as thin as Nick's shirt is. Kate follows them, block after block, as they appear to the rest of the world as just a nice couple out for a late walk after their evening's entertainment. They could be anyone, tourists or locals, lovers or newly acquainted, to the outside world, but Kate knows better. They are vampires. Vampires who know each other quite well.
She's not entirely certain who sired who, or that it even matters, but the matter of their disappearance from Toronto does prompt a few questions. At the service, she'd overheard stories about Nick Knight and all the weird things about him that lend themselves to gossip. She'd heard about his allergy to sunlight, his lack of interest in social events, his strange home which had doubled as the crime scene. This all made it likely that Nick had already been a vampire, but how had that worked? How on earth had a vampire managed to become a police detective? Angel's less than legal attempt at freelance detective work had been one thing; actual police work would be something entirely different. And why would a vampire be interested in that kind of work anyway? Angel had made it pretty clear to her that he was the only one even vaguely interested in good. None of it makes sense. Clearly Nick had simply been a strange guy, a guy who had happened to have one of those rare diseases where sunlight makes the person sick, and who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They must have become vampires at the same time.
Not that it matters all that much, Kate muses to herself. A vampire is a vampire is bait for a demon hunter like herself.
Nick whispers something in Natalie's ear and Kate wonders what he's said. Near the end of the block, the pair turns into an alley. Cautiously, Kate follows, her trusty stake drawn from her jacket's inside pocket, her tiny bottles of holy water at the ready in the outside pockets. She's learned fighting skills never touched on at the police academy since her departure from the City of Lost Angels and she has a good idea of how vampires (on the rare occasions they hunt in pairs or packs) plan their attacks on unsuspecting mortals.
This is not going by plan.
The pair simply stand and look at her, at first wordlessly, taking in her raised hand, clutching the stake. Natalie looks at her in confusion.
But most striking, they do not attack. Their faces, their eyes do not change. They do not bare their fangs, do not take a predatory stance. It is as if they do not think her dangerous.
Natalie takes a step forward, whispering Kate's full name, as if surprised or shocked to see her human host's cousin, almost as if by approaching Kate in this way, she'll take her by surprise. But Kate is not so easily fooled. She could not save her father, and there are innumerable victims she has not been able to save from vampires over the last couple of years, but if there is one thing she will do, out of respect for her cousin's memory, she will stake this monster and send it back to the hell from whence it came.
Cautiously, pretending to be taken in by Natalie's innocent facade, Kate approaches. She lowers the stake, but her grip is still strong on it and she tightens it still. She comes close enough to be embraced by the thing that was once her cousin and before any word can pass Natalie's unnaturally bright lips, she does it:
She plunges the stake into the monster's heart.
Natalie gasps - but remains solid. Where is the dust, and the unholy screams of death that Kate is now accustomed to when the wood reaches the innermost spot of the creature's heart? She steps back, waiting for that moment when the body turns suddenly to dust, but does not come. And before she can try again, the monster that is Nick Knight is at Natalie's side, taking the stake from her chest and gently lowering her to the ground.
Kate is not entirely prepared for two vampires this evening, having only one stake and that one is currently in Nick's hand, being drawn from Natalie's heart. In the past, one stake has been enough for as many as three vampires in a night, so long as she remembers to pull back just before it turns to dust along with the demon itself. But she no longer has that stake, only her little bottles of holy water and the cross necklace that she wears hidden underneath her shirt.
She steps back, a little in shock. She's never really staked someone she's known before. Granted, Natalie is no longer her crazy Canadian older cousin, the one who would talk her into playing tricks on the others during those summer visits to their common grandmother. She's dead now; this is nothing but a shell, a demon.
Nick murmurs something to Natalie, laying on the ground, but Kate cannot hear the actual words. She's gone deaf, the world is soundless, mute. She can't even hear her own heart, isn't certain it's still beating. In a moment, in a single second, Nick is now beside her, his eyes glowing a little, his lips moving but still she cannot hear what he is saying. There is pain in her arms where his strong - demonically strong - hands have gripped her, pain in her mind as if he's drilling into it with his eyes. She fights, fights, fights against it but in the end she loses. The world falls into a fog, something she hasn't experienced since that night when she nearly died.
When the fog clears, for just the faintest of moments, she imagines she's back in that apartment in LA, with Angel trying to wake her, damp and shivering, but it passes and she is alone. She's not sure what's happened; it takes a few moments to be able to sit, let alone stand, and what she sees puzzles her: a few scattered but still full bottles of holy water, her stake - blood stained! - resting on the dirty ground. Slowly, she remembers that she's in New Orleans, that she had planned an evening at a couple of the questionable bars that she thinks might be covers for vampire havens.
Minutes pass; it's late, late in the evening and there is little artificial light around her. The sky is clear and the stars are bright. It's a surreal feeling.
Clearly something has happened here, she tells herself as she finally stands up and makes her way out of the alley. She leaves the stake there - fewer questions to ask if she's stopped by the local police - but tucks the holy water into her pockets just to be safe. She isn't ready to wonder what actually happened to her, though it has to have been somewhat supernatural. She wasn't mugged - her wallet is still intact, proven by the fact that she has enough money to pay for the first taxi she comes across, two blocks away - and she definitely hasn't been raped. In fact, physically, she feels fine, albeit a little sluggish and tired.
In her hotel room, she falls into a deep sleep, awoken only by the sunlight shining through the west-facing window in the late afternoon. She's awake, alert, thinking now, but she can't figure it out. She's too weirded out by the situation and decides, almost instantaneously, to leave town. New Orleans will always be here in the future if she ever plucks up enough courage to return. At the very least, she's never read the collected works of Anne Rice, so she knows it's something real that's causing her discomfort, her unease, her blackout last night, and not some dreamy remnant of some horror novel. She gathers her things together, checks out of the hotel, grabs a hamburger from a drive-thru and heads west for Texas.
Just as she crosses the border into the lone-star state, her thoughts inexplicably turn to her family. She remembers her father, the vague memories of her mother. She recalls her grandmother, whose house had been home during the Augusts of her childhood, where she saw her far-scattered cousins. She hasn't thought of her family in ages, not since her father died back when she was thrust so suddenly into the world of the supernatural.
Inexplicably, her thoughts turn to her cousin Natalie, who'd disappeared a couple of years before then, and she wonders what Nat Lambert, skeptic extraordinaire, would make of vampires and demons and all the things that go bump in the night. If anyone could resist believing in those things, it probably would have been her. She wonders what it would have taken for Natalie to believe, to accept that the world Kate now lives in is real, and not a delusion.
She fiddles with the radio and listens to the late-night news report. She laughs at the story along with the anchor - aliens? This Alec Coleson fellow sounds like he's got a few screws loose. After a few moments' contemplation, she realizes that the guy might be mistaken: not aliens, but demons of some kind. There have been a few that could be mistaken for little gray men. Or even little green men. She stretches her short-term memory, trying to remember the details of the report so far. Coleson is claiming that the Air Force knows something about the aliens...
The anchor continues, saying that the Air Force has denied all knowledge of aliens and in fact claims that Coleson was peddling some kind of prototype hologram. Kate swerves briefly when she recognizes the voice of the Air Force spokesman - spokeswoman - explaining the details - another family relation, another person she hasn't see since the beginning of time. And the plan is already set:
A few days in Fort Worth, to check out those leads she'd gotten in Atlanta. A day in Roswell, just for the heck of it. She's always wanted to visit it out of plain morbid curiosity. And then north, to Colorado Springs and to Sam, who'd hopefully have a couch free for her. It’s the least she can do, considering she'd had to cancel coming to Kate's father's funeral at the last minute, citing something to do with national security.
As Kate pulls into the parking lot of her next hotel - a chain whose name she actually recognizes - she puzzles momentarily over that little memory, the brief phone message from Sam those years ago. There's something bizarre about it, and then as she pays for the room, it hits her:
What does an astrophysicist have to do with national security?
[fin]