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Broken Wings
folder
G through L › Law & Order
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
10
Views:
3,567
Reviews:
16
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
G through L › Law & Order
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
10
Views:
3,567
Reviews:
16
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Law & Order, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
One
(Present day)
He thrashed beneath the suffocating blankets as beads of sweat covered the length of his body, sticking the soft material to his lean form. A lock of matted dark hair was glued to his forehead as he rolled back and forth across the soft pillowcases. His heart hammered within his chest as soft moans escaped his parched and cracked lips into the thick blanket of silence. He whimpered as his eyes fluttered open and stared into the fathomless world of his bedroom, unseeing.
Thunder rumbled, mixing with a heavy sigh and the last fleeting images of the nightmare as it faded away into oblivion. A bolt of lightening struck across the world outside and splashed blue-white through the curtained window. For a brief moment, the bedroom was illuminated and the shadows were driven back. Snorting in disgust, he switched the bedside light on and all the while scolding himself about irrational fears best left behind, in the past with his childhood. Sliding out from beneath the drenched covers of the bed, he rubbed his face in an attempt to wake up faster. Glancing at the red numbers glowing off tharmcarmclock, he groaned as his body slowly stretched.
Clutching the soft fabric of the curtains, he stared into the silent world outside the apartment building. Empty streets bathed in a fluorescent orange greeted him in the deserted night as memories descended upon his battered soul. He winced as the countless faces cascaded before his eyes, parading the guilt of failure as they danced grimly by. The enthral apparitions clawed through him, ripping open scars long thought healed after years of persistent and vigilant denial.
Once upon a time the bottle had been excellent distractions from the frailties of the crushing reality of his job. Years of systematic abuse no longer aided him in his eternal quest in fleeing from the faces haunting him, lurking beneath his eyelids every night. With the desertion of the intoxicating spirits laying in wait within the glass bottles or at the bottom of a cup, he had resorted to the next best thing: the mask.
The mask was useless without another brilliant invention of the human psyche: the tongue. He soon found that this crutch fulfilled and guaranteed him the outward appearance he had sought from the beginning, a way for him to deceive those around him. Years of dedicated practice eventually enabled him to deceive the most qualified of head shrinks, thus enabling him to continue doing the one job that he ever knew. For him the job was a catch twenty-two: as much as he hated what his job entailed, he loved it and knew there was really no other he would rather do. After all, how many got to say that they were ones catching the bad guys?
Even with all the work of the mask and the biting sarcasm, he knew his colleagues worried. They were almost as good actors as he, but still not good enough. In a profession dedicated to fishing out the lies from the truths, the years of experience had been a better teacher then he had once believed. He never let on, allowing their illusions rather then crushing them. Life on the job had crushed so many before, who was he to crush one more when they might need it as a safety net: something to discuss in hushed whispers and behind his back. He never minded the gossip as long as it was far away from the truth.
His head slumped in defeat, knowing that sleep was forever out of his reach for the night. Wandering aimlessly through the Spartan apartment, he noted the date circled in red on the calendar: not that he needed a reminder. The first case as a true detective, fresh out of the starting gate and he had failed. His finger slowly traced the dates from start to finish, remembering every crime scene in all their horrific glory. It wasn’t enough that it had been his first case, but that the case had spanned almost his entire career before and no clue as to the perpetrator’s identity or motives had been found to date. After an infamous spree, the case had suddenly stopped. The cat and mouse game had stopped, vanished as though it had never existed at all.
Grief flooded him as guilt swelled within his heart. Breathing deeply, he stared at the bold numbers printed on the calender hanging on the wall as they blurred into a black blob. His hands balled into fists at his sides, digging into the numb flesh of his palms. A soft, inaudible whimper escaped his parched lips as he stared through the walls and into the recesses of his mind. Unsolved cases were a part of the job and many had theirs, but this one was rarely far from his mind. Unconsciously, he sought similarities in any case that made its way across his desk. Whether it was for the victims or his own sanity, he was unable to say for sure. The demons were constantly there, fluttering at the edges of his mind and waiting for him at night.
He surrendered to the demands of his protesting body as he made his way into the living room, hoping that something would be on that would take away the demons for one more night. Skipping past the news channels quickly and needing the diversion of fantasy televison, he settled in lying across the couch. As he searched, his mind wandered back over two decades and the victim lying he whe warehouse. With the memories came the smell of stale air perfumed with the lingering scent of killer’s last victim. He shuddered as the information from the cold case file surfaced in his sleep deprived brain.
Jessica Marylin Myers had been an aspiring art student with the gift of Rembranso hso he had been told by all those that knew her.The middle child of Thomas and Eve Myer’s three children had been a bright beacon of hope in the family’s home in the rundown urban area of Baltimore, Maryland. At age eighteen she had been accepted into Juliart and was working at the local Chevron gas station for minimum wage in the hopes oftingting an apartment near the arts school. Dedicating her free time to her studies, Jessica had no time to socialize outside school.
Her parents had waited until the following day to notify authorities that their responsible daughter had not returned home the night before after getting off work at the gas station. At first the Baltimore Police had treated her case as a Missing Persons, but within a few hours a uniformed patrol officer had radioed the location of Jessica’s missing truck into dispatch. The nineteen eighty-nine mauve Chevy truck was parked along the highway, only thirteen miles away from her parents’ home. It wasn’t until the following day that G had assigned him the case, not knowing that it would end up in the file cabinet with the other cases connected to the latest serial killer.
Looking back with hindsight, perhaps his old homicide captain had known that it was one of the killer’s victims after all. He smiled to himself, it wasn’t everyday one met a man who could make an order sound like a dying man’s last request. A frown spread across his face as he pictured his late friend, funny how things turned out. He had always thought that he would be the one killed on the job and not the gentle man. To make matters worse for him, he felt guilty for being in New York when G was murdered. Although Baltimore was only a two hour train ride away, it had felt like a world away.
Going back to Charm City was as hard as hearing the news when he had gotten the phone call. With all the found memories at the shop and at the Waterfront, they were equally balanced with the bad as well. He had met and married his ex-wives, the burnt bridges and the unsolved cases were always waiting there for him every time he thought of Baltimore. After the funeral, he had walked along the Atlantic shoreline and the memories had come back. With each step, images of the elusive killer’s victims came back to haunt him. The poltergeist conjured in his mind belittled him with guilt for not solving their cases and bringing their murderer to justice. On the train ride back to Penn station, he pushed them back into the dark recesses of his mind.
Sighing, he flipped the channel as an info commercial came on the set. Glancing at the clock, he groaned as he realized that it was only a little after one in the morning. Rubbing his tired eyes, he stopped suddenly and checked the clock again. It was officially Jessica’s anniversary, sixteen years down to the day and hour of her disappearance from the small gas station. It seemed to him that the ghosts would never leave him alone as the illuminated red numbers blurred together.
A/N
This chapter beta-ed by Perfect Velvet
He thrashed beneath the suffocating blankets as beads of sweat covered the length of his body, sticking the soft material to his lean form. A lock of matted dark hair was glued to his forehead as he rolled back and forth across the soft pillowcases. His heart hammered within his chest as soft moans escaped his parched and cracked lips into the thick blanket of silence. He whimpered as his eyes fluttered open and stared into the fathomless world of his bedroom, unseeing.
Thunder rumbled, mixing with a heavy sigh and the last fleeting images of the nightmare as it faded away into oblivion. A bolt of lightening struck across the world outside and splashed blue-white through the curtained window. For a brief moment, the bedroom was illuminated and the shadows were driven back. Snorting in disgust, he switched the bedside light on and all the while scolding himself about irrational fears best left behind, in the past with his childhood. Sliding out from beneath the drenched covers of the bed, he rubbed his face in an attempt to wake up faster. Glancing at the red numbers glowing off tharmcarmclock, he groaned as his body slowly stretched.
Clutching the soft fabric of the curtains, he stared into the silent world outside the apartment building. Empty streets bathed in a fluorescent orange greeted him in the deserted night as memories descended upon his battered soul. He winced as the countless faces cascaded before his eyes, parading the guilt of failure as they danced grimly by. The enthral apparitions clawed through him, ripping open scars long thought healed after years of persistent and vigilant denial.
Once upon a time the bottle had been excellent distractions from the frailties of the crushing reality of his job. Years of systematic abuse no longer aided him in his eternal quest in fleeing from the faces haunting him, lurking beneath his eyelids every night. With the desertion of the intoxicating spirits laying in wait within the glass bottles or at the bottom of a cup, he had resorted to the next best thing: the mask.
The mask was useless without another brilliant invention of the human psyche: the tongue. He soon found that this crutch fulfilled and guaranteed him the outward appearance he had sought from the beginning, a way for him to deceive those around him. Years of dedicated practice eventually enabled him to deceive the most qualified of head shrinks, thus enabling him to continue doing the one job that he ever knew. For him the job was a catch twenty-two: as much as he hated what his job entailed, he loved it and knew there was really no other he would rather do. After all, how many got to say that they were ones catching the bad guys?
Even with all the work of the mask and the biting sarcasm, he knew his colleagues worried. They were almost as good actors as he, but still not good enough. In a profession dedicated to fishing out the lies from the truths, the years of experience had been a better teacher then he had once believed. He never let on, allowing their illusions rather then crushing them. Life on the job had crushed so many before, who was he to crush one more when they might need it as a safety net: something to discuss in hushed whispers and behind his back. He never minded the gossip as long as it was far away from the truth.
His head slumped in defeat, knowing that sleep was forever out of his reach for the night. Wandering aimlessly through the Spartan apartment, he noted the date circled in red on the calendar: not that he needed a reminder. The first case as a true detective, fresh out of the starting gate and he had failed. His finger slowly traced the dates from start to finish, remembering every crime scene in all their horrific glory. It wasn’t enough that it had been his first case, but that the case had spanned almost his entire career before and no clue as to the perpetrator’s identity or motives had been found to date. After an infamous spree, the case had suddenly stopped. The cat and mouse game had stopped, vanished as though it had never existed at all.
Grief flooded him as guilt swelled within his heart. Breathing deeply, he stared at the bold numbers printed on the calender hanging on the wall as they blurred into a black blob. His hands balled into fists at his sides, digging into the numb flesh of his palms. A soft, inaudible whimper escaped his parched lips as he stared through the walls and into the recesses of his mind. Unsolved cases were a part of the job and many had theirs, but this one was rarely far from his mind. Unconsciously, he sought similarities in any case that made its way across his desk. Whether it was for the victims or his own sanity, he was unable to say for sure. The demons were constantly there, fluttering at the edges of his mind and waiting for him at night.
He surrendered to the demands of his protesting body as he made his way into the living room, hoping that something would be on that would take away the demons for one more night. Skipping past the news channels quickly and needing the diversion of fantasy televison, he settled in lying across the couch. As he searched, his mind wandered back over two decades and the victim lying he whe warehouse. With the memories came the smell of stale air perfumed with the lingering scent of killer’s last victim. He shuddered as the information from the cold case file surfaced in his sleep deprived brain.
Jessica Marylin Myers had been an aspiring art student with the gift of Rembranso hso he had been told by all those that knew her.The middle child of Thomas and Eve Myer’s three children had been a bright beacon of hope in the family’s home in the rundown urban area of Baltimore, Maryland. At age eighteen she had been accepted into Juliart and was working at the local Chevron gas station for minimum wage in the hopes oftingting an apartment near the arts school. Dedicating her free time to her studies, Jessica had no time to socialize outside school.
Her parents had waited until the following day to notify authorities that their responsible daughter had not returned home the night before after getting off work at the gas station. At first the Baltimore Police had treated her case as a Missing Persons, but within a few hours a uniformed patrol officer had radioed the location of Jessica’s missing truck into dispatch. The nineteen eighty-nine mauve Chevy truck was parked along the highway, only thirteen miles away from her parents’ home. It wasn’t until the following day that G had assigned him the case, not knowing that it would end up in the file cabinet with the other cases connected to the latest serial killer.
Looking back with hindsight, perhaps his old homicide captain had known that it was one of the killer’s victims after all. He smiled to himself, it wasn’t everyday one met a man who could make an order sound like a dying man’s last request. A frown spread across his face as he pictured his late friend, funny how things turned out. He had always thought that he would be the one killed on the job and not the gentle man. To make matters worse for him, he felt guilty for being in New York when G was murdered. Although Baltimore was only a two hour train ride away, it had felt like a world away.
Going back to Charm City was as hard as hearing the news when he had gotten the phone call. With all the found memories at the shop and at the Waterfront, they were equally balanced with the bad as well. He had met and married his ex-wives, the burnt bridges and the unsolved cases were always waiting there for him every time he thought of Baltimore. After the funeral, he had walked along the Atlantic shoreline and the memories had come back. With each step, images of the elusive killer’s victims came back to haunt him. The poltergeist conjured in his mind belittled him with guilt for not solving their cases and bringing their murderer to justice. On the train ride back to Penn station, he pushed them back into the dark recesses of his mind.
Sighing, he flipped the channel as an info commercial came on the set. Glancing at the clock, he groaned as he realized that it was only a little after one in the morning. Rubbing his tired eyes, he stopped suddenly and checked the clock again. It was officially Jessica’s anniversary, sixteen years down to the day and hour of her disappearance from the small gas station. It seemed to him that the ghosts would never leave him alone as the illuminated red numbers blurred together.
A/N
This chapter beta-ed by Perfect Velvet