A/N: Hello, gentle readers! Two weeks with no new eps? Time to fill the void with fanfic! If all goes as planned, I will update every 2-3 days and finish the day the next new episode broadcasts (in North America).

As a writing experiment, I have structured this story using the same 7-act format as the show, so I have 7 chapters. For a more authentic episode-like experience, you should watch some commercials on YouTube between chapters 2 through 7. Or maybe go get snacks. ;)

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

ACT 1

"John, is that you? Wait! It's me, Julia!"

It was only ten p.m., early by party standards, but the woman in the little red dress was staggering down the sidewalk calling to no one, and the people who swerved to avoid her assumed she was already wasted.

One unlucky man getting out of a taxi didn't notice her in time, and the woman half-fell into him, holding herself up by his shoulder. "Whoa, watch it, lady!" he said with annoyance, but when he got a good look at her emotion-raw face he shifted to concern. "Hey, are you all right?"

Her gaze was focused on a point over his right shoulder. "It is you," she half-whispered, and she smiled. The man she was leaning on could have been a parking meter for all she was truly aware of him.

He glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one there. "Do you want me to call someone for you?"

She didn't hear him. "I always hoped you would come back. I'm so sorry I—" She listened to something only she could hear, and her eyes began to shine with tears of joy. "I love you, too."

Suddenly she gasped and collapsed. The man caught her in time to break her fall and lower her gently to the ground. He called 911 immediately, but it was too late. She was already dead.

"Whaddaya think, Doc? Will you die this happy?"

Henry raised his eyebrows at Hanson's question and half-turned from his examination of the body on the sidewalk. The woman's final expression was one of complete bliss. "I doubt whether 'alone on the street' qualifies as a happy death. Besides, if my suspicion is correct, she was probably hallucinating."

"Must have been a good trip," Hanson observed.

Jo opened the small clutch purse she had removed from the woman's wrist and found her ID. "Julia Warner, 35, lives on the Upper East Side. The witness says she came from that direction, moving erratically." She pointed up the street. "She acted like she was talking to someone she knew, then suddenly she was dead. Sound familiar?"

Henry nodded grimly and confirmed what they were all thinking: "Oz."

New York's latest craze in recreational drugs, Oz had hit the club market right around New Year's. It was difficult to find and very expensive, but demand had quickly gone through the roof. Sales didn't seem affected by the fact that it was killing people—six in the last two months, and the rate was increasing.

"You've been pretty deep into research since you saw your first Oz victim last week," Jo said to her partner. "Have you found anything that might help us here?"

Henry shook his head. "Unfortunately not. Even after analyzing the sample from Vice, I have no idea how it kills." His brows knit in frustration. "In fact, I don't know how it works at all. Based on interviews with users it causes some sort of vivid hallucinations, but it's unlike any hallucinogen I've seen before. Biochemically speaking, it shouldn't be either mind-altering or deadly."

Trying to sort out the hows and whys of those five—now six—deaths had kept Henry working late every night that week. In fact, everyone in the department had been working extra hours. The Oz death rate was so much higher than normal, and the actual cause of death still so mysterious, that the commissioner had declared that all Oz-related cases would be considered homicides until proven otherwise. The mastermind behind the drug was a man known predictably as The Wizard, and so far he was nothing more than a ghost.

"Wasn't that other victim the first time you had to list 'unknown causes' on a final report?" Hanson put in.

"Thank you, Detective Hanson, for reminding me of my failure."

"You haven't failed," Jo said, giving Hanson a 'be nice' look. "It's just taking you a normal-person amount of time to figure it out. Now you know what it feels like to slum with the rest of us."

Henry didn't feel very comforted. "While I'm 'slumming', people are dying."

"You'll get there," Jo said with assurance. "Just give it time." She returned to examining the body. "Judging by her outfit she probably came from one of the higher-end clubs a few blocks up."

"Several to choose from," Hanson offered. "You've got your Ground Zero, your Bird Cage, Neverland, or for those extra classy occasions there's Ga-Ga-Girlz."

Neverland. Henry recognized that name. He stood up and removed his gloves. "To learn any more I'll need my equipment. When you're finished, please have the remains sent to the lab. I'll meet you there shortly; I have something to attend to first."

Jo looked at him curiously. "Everything all right?"

He smiled and forced himself to meet her eyes. "Yes, fine—just picking up a prescription for Abe. I'll see you at the lab."

"Sure, see you there." She turned away when a CSU tech approached with a question, and Henry strode off in the direction from which Julia Warner had come.

Henry stood outside the entrance to Neverland, a muffled bassline pulsing from inside. In his research he had learned that this club was on the irregular rotation of places to buy Oz. This was probably where their victim had been prior to her death. Had she come here tonight looking for Oz, or had she merely stumbled upon an opportunity? We make thousands of choices every day, he thought. Left or right, paper or plastic, yes or no. Some choices go almost unnoticed, and others change our lives. Or end them. How can we know which ones are which?

He made a choice of his own. He approached the door, and the bouncer nodded him in.

After five minutes at the bar he knew who the dealer was. He waited another ten minutes until the woman in the blue dress made eye contact and arched an eyebrow, and he took that as his cue to approach her.

"May I buy you a drink?" he offered.

"I have a drink," she said. "But I can give you something."

Henry used every ounce of what Abe called his 'immortal charm' and pitched his voice to a private cadence. "Oh? And what might that be?"

She held out a napkin scrawled with black ink. "My number." When he reached out his hand and took it, he felt the weight and shape of a small vial folded within the paper. The woman in blue leaned in so that her lips were almost touching his ear and whispered, "Compliments of the Wizard." She pulled back and withdrew her hand from his with a slide of fingers. Without another word, she turned and walked away.

Henry watched her go, not daring to open the napkin in public. When it was obvious their interaction was over, he paid for his drink and left.

The liquid in the vial glowed an emerald green when Henry held it up to his desk lamp at home. The color was almost unnaturally vivid. Perhaps that should have made him reconsider what he was about to do, but it didn't. Using the syringe in his other hand, he pierced the cap and with practiced ease drew the liquid into the barrel. His sleeve was already rolled up, his arm tied off with rubber tubing above the elbow.

Next to him, Abe tried one more time to get two consecutive words out of his father that made sense. "Henry, you are the NYPD's medical examiner, not their human guinea pig. Why are you doing this? For that matter, what are you doing?"

Henry flicked the barrel with one finger and depressed the plunger to clear the air bubbles. "I've just come from examining the body of a woman who was killed by this drug, but I can't prove it. She is the sixth person to die the same way since January." He fisted and released his hand several times, preparing the veins. "I intend to discover how it works first-hand, before a seventh body turns up."

Abe refrained from pointing out that Henry's would technically be the seventh body. He squinted suspiciously at the green substance. "Where did you say this came from?"

Henry hesitated. "A woman I met in a bar."

"I see. Well, maybe she wants to go fish you out of the river at this hour."

"Abe, I need to try."

"Does Jo know about this?" Abe pressed. "I mean, not the whole story, but about buying fishy drugs from women in bars? Even if you do learn something useful, how are you going to explain how you learned it?"

Henry shook his head. "I'll cross that bridge later. Please, will you help me or not?"

Abe sighed and waved off the plea. "Who do you take me for? You know I'll be there. I don't like it, but I'll be there."

Henry smiled gratefully and turned to the task at hand. According to his information about the size of a normal dose, the woman in blue had given him three hits. Surely all three at once were enough to overdose. He found a good vein and injected the entire syringe.

At first he felt nothing. Then, in the corner of his vision, something moved. He turned toward it, and the ghost of a figure began to resolve. Not enough to be solid, but enough to recognize. It was the cello player he had met on the subway, alive and well and playing that concert after all. She was on stage with a quartet, and the way she kept finding his eyes told him they would be getting a drink after the recital.

Suddenly, the image dissolved and reformed. Abigail. She was holding a baby and smiling widely at him. She held out the bundle to another ghost, a boy bordering on puberty—young Abraham—and he took it with care, also smiling.

The image reformed again. He was on a ship, standing over a black man shot through the chest who was still bleeding out but already dead. The dead man melted away within seconds.

The ghosts were morphing more quickly now, a blur of images that were almost memories, but not quite: a trench in World War I; a dance floor in 1865, swirling into a dance from 1965; Nora welcoming him home; a graveyard; a train station. Each image that appeared felt more substantial and more detailed. He began to hear echoes of sound, distorted as if he were hearing them from underwater, but growing nearer. By the time he saw Jo half-smiling at him from behind her coffee cup at a crime scene that was covered with orange Nerf balls, it felt almost entirely real.

When his death came, sudden and painless, it surprised him. His last thought was that he wished he could revisit that final hallucination. The case looked interesting, and there was something intriguing about Jo's expression...

Henry broke the surface of the water with a gasp. After taking a moment to orient himself, he swam toward the lights of shore, frowning. That had been one of his more puzzling deaths. All the hallucinations aside, he had no idea what had physiologically caused him to die. He told himself that at least he could eliminate several ways that Oz wasn't killing its victims.

He saw a car parked off the parkway near the shore and wondered how Abe had gotten here so fast. Did the drug somehow extend the time it took for him to reawaken? If so, maybe this exercise hadn't been for nothing.

Henry looked more closely and realized that it wasn't Abe's car: it was Jo's. He squinted through the water in his eyes and saw that she was leaning back against the passenger door and looking straight at him.

This was not good. Abe may have disapproved of Henry testing the drug on himself, but his son would never have involved Jo without his consent. Not when she didn't know his secret yet. At least, he hadn't told her—so why was she here?

He reached the shallows. There was no point in trying to hide. With a mental shrug and hope for sudden inspiration, he walked out of the water and toward the car, completely exposed in more ways than one. She still hadn't moved from her spot. He could see now that she held a bundled towel.

He got within six feet of her before she finally straightened up and took a few steps forward to meet him. She wordlessly held out the towel, and he took it. The look on her face was a mixture of amusement and mild challenge. Henry quickly rubbed his face dry before wrapping the towel around his waist.

He said the only thing he could think of. "I can explain."

"Save it," Jo said dryly. "We're late for dinner, and you know how my dad gets when he's two drinks ahead of us." Her look turned mischievous. "Welcome back, by the way." She closed the distance between them by hooking a finger under the towel and pulling him in, and then she kissed him.

The kiss felt like a familiar greeting, at least for her, not tentative or nervous. She lingered. So did he—he was too surprised to protest.

She released his mouth, but not the towel, and in a dry imitation of a doting housewife she asked, "So how was your death today, honey?"

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