Waking The Dead
Author: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
Rating: PG
Summary: Post-fic to "Underground Railroad," a lighthearted piece that answers exactly who Danny was on that date with, and also why Martin is so tweaked about that particular event.
Spoilers: Underground Railroad
Disclaimer: Without A Trace is not mine. It's the property of CBS and its production company and creators and so forth. However, this fic and all original content in it IS mine, and if you wish to repost it, please let me know at AgentThespis@msn.com, and I'll gladly let you. I also want to thank the phenomenal team at WAT, especially the delightful Eric Close, for a show that got me hooked from day one. Jeremy Piven and the Cupid team for inspiration. All the Coupling fans out there - Peter is based on the great work of Jack Davenport. And I owe Jennifer Paige for "Beautiful."
The day before.
"That can't be healthy for you," he said, feeling the sudden urge to roll his eyes. She scoffed, eying the five billion and one various ice cream flavors in the frozen food aisle. "So what? I'll die younger, but I'll die happy. I'm 32, Martin, I'm not dead yet, or even close." "I know. Believe me, I know." Trish laughed, shifting the cell phone on her shoulder as she opened one of the cold cases to find a carton of her usual Breyers French Vanilla. She grabbed one, put it into the cart, hesitated, and went back for a carton of Caramel Praline Fudge. They'd make an ice cream flavor out of anything. "French Vanilla," he said on instinct. Now she laughed. "Yes. And Caramel Fudge." "You're branching out. I'm shocked." "Are not." She mentally reviewed her shopping list in her head, and made the short walk to the produce section. She needed some ingredients for the taco salad her brother was attempting to make this evening. Handling a head of iceberg lettuce, she said randomly, "You think lettuce makes as good a silencer as a potato?" "They're both large blunt objects," he theorized. "What, is that MacGyver I hear in your head?" "I always wanted to be The Equalizer." Martin just chuckled. He'd heard all this before.
On the day of the Dobson case.
Danny caught Martin looking at him suspiciously again. And he knew it had nothing to do with all the uneventful surveillance tapes they were going through. "What?" he said, exasperated, turning around in his chair. "What the hell do you want, Fitzgerald? You are severely freaking me out here." "You know what I want." "You want to know who he is." "I do want to know who he is, and I want to know what happened." Taylor leaned back in his chair. "You know, for someone who makes a point of stating that Trish is your ex-girlfriend, you really take an interest in what happens with her." Martin grumbled. "Okay, you double-date with my ex-girlfriend and this new guy, of course I want to know what happens. Two people I care about and two people who could be sociopaths." "You care. I'm touched." Danny chuckled. "My date was not a sociopath, thank you." "Who the hell is this guy, though?" "His name is Peter Christie, and according to Trish, he just transferred in to the D.A.'s office in Jersey. He's British, originally from London. Spent some time in law enforcement, actually, until he was shot. The surgery took hours and screwed with his nerves and reaction time, and he couldn't get back to duty. He went and became a lawyer." Danny couldn't resist a quip. "Apparently she has a thing for law enforcement guys." "I'm going to ignore that last part. Give me details." "I gave you details." Danny paused. "You don't actually feel threatened by a guy she's been on one date with who can't handle a gun anymore, do you?" Martin muttered something. "What?" "I had this weird dream last night." "Is this something you really want to say?" "Shut up for a second. I was calling Trish on her cell phone. She was grocery shopping. And we were talking." "About?" "Ice cream flavors, and using lettuce as a silencer." "Can you?" "I don't know. But the point is that I don't have dreams, and even when I do, she stopped being in them years ago. It's weird, and that it happens before she's out with this, whoever the hell this guy is. it's very weird." Danny looked skeptical, but nodded. "You read too much into things, Fitzgerald." "Whatever." More film advancing. Clicks on another keyboard. Martin took a long drink of coffee. He needed to calm his nerves. "Hey, produce in dreams equals fertility." Instantaneous choking. He had to swallow quickly, looking at Danny with surprised eyes, barely managing to push out a "What?" "I'm looking at this dream dictionary. Produce, it says, represents fertility. How long did you two talk about lettuce?" "Let's . let's get back to the tape." "Don't be one of those guys, Martin." "One of which guys?" he said, still trying to keep his eyes on the film if only so he couldn't show the other agent the cross between irritation and mortification he hadn't been able to hold back. "Those guys that dump a girl and then bitch and moan for the rest of their lives because they screwed up and aren't honest enough with themselves to admit it." He couldn't hold back a groan. "I am not one of those guys." "You're starting to sound like one." "Am not." "You are!" Danny was grinning widely now, knowing he had plenty of ammunition to fire at will. "Besides," he said flippantly, turning back to the video screens with well partitioned interest, "if you really want to see this guy, I've got to go by his office tomorrow." "What?" Martin blurted, nearly choking again. Taylor was just nodding. "He's got an interest in sociology, possibly doing some volunteer social work. I told him I'd see what I could find out and run it by, you know, since I have some experience." Beat, just enough to make Martin squirm. "It's not like I need body armor to go across the Hudson and drop paperwork." Martin was still staring crazily at him. "It's not some coalition, Fitz," Danny continued, anything to make him stop looking like he'd just said he'd killed Martin's cat. "It's not us against you. It's not anybody against you. Maybe you should just let that go." "Yeah." His voice was soft. "Except." "Except you can't." He just nodded, unable to admit it, even to himself.
"This is it. This is it. I am so done with this." Jace McCullough signed off, then pulled off his headset and dropped his globe-shaped paperweight into the drawer. "You'd think they'd understand simple English. I know I have a college degree but it's not like I'm Ivy League or anything." "Such is the world," another controller down the line quipped, and Jace just glared in his direction. He spun round in his chair to see his sister behind him, arms folded across her chest, trying to keep from smirking. "What? It's not that funny." "It's not funny. I'm just used to you." She clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly as he stood out of the chair and they began to walk off the Newark TRACON floor. He cast a half-annoyed look in her direction. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere with Peter?" She shook her head. "Not tonight. You know I give you at least one night a week." "Yeah, but I never know which one." "You want me to schedule it? Like Scrabble?" Jace just rolled his eyes. "What's up?" "Not much. I got to hang out in the super's office for a while. He has some really cool toys. He has stuff Derrick would've killed for. But I'm much less intimidated by Chris than I ever was by Derrick." "You were intimidated by Derrick?" "Well, given that I had a lot on my plate at the time." "Right." Jace nodded, grabbing his jacket from his locker and slipping into it. "This isn't going to be another one of those Martin conversations, is it?" "Another what?" "You know. You talk about him more than you think you do." "Don't." "Trish, as your brother and most prominent male figure, I know." He was looking at her pointedly but holding back an outright little laugh. "Why don't you just admit that you liked the guy and it got screwed up?" "I did. I do. It did." Trish ran a hand through her hair. "He's still a friend, okay? When he wants to be. I know I'm overprotective of the people in my life and Martin isn't an exception to that rule. But I've got Peter." "I know. But you worry about Martin." "Yeah, because he merits cause for alarm every now and then." "Trish, the man was straighter than fiberboard, come on. Aside from a couple random experiments in new procedures, you couldn't force him out of line." "Road cones, Jace. He utilizes road cones." "Whatever works, right? Don't tell me you think you drove him off his head." "He wouldn't need my help, and I wouldn't need his for that." "Well I think you both got it." Jace shrugged, knowing his sister wouldn't give another inch. "Just my opinion. Besides, I like Peter." "Oh, my God." She stopped dead in the parking lot. "You actually like one of my boyfriends?" "You've had three," he corrected. "And yes, I do. He's a different kind of man." "Different than Martin, you mean." Jace nodded. "Very different. But fundamentally the same." "What the hell does that mean?" she replied, but he turned and headed for the car without another word.
Peter Christie nearly dropped the phone and it swiveled in his hand before he could get a solid grip on it again. Ever since he'd been shot, that happened a lot - one of the effects of severe nerve damage. But he was fairly sure this physical foul-up had less to do with almost a day of surgery and more to do with a little emotional psych-out he was giving himself. He put the phone back on the cradle, sighed and decided to make the call later. "Peter, what the." "What?" "You okay over there?" The D.A. looked over at his co-worker across the room. "David, you know I drop a lot of things." David nodded. "You're acting weird today, though. Weirder than usual." Peter rolled his eyes. How not being weird had come to be weird, he didn't know. "In what sense, O expert therapist?" A lot of the time he could turn to David for serious advice at dealing with his medical deficiencies and insecurities, but a lot of the time David was just playing analyst, and it was hard to tell which. "Your cat die yesterday?" "I don't own a cat, David," Peter deadpanned. "Okay, then what?" A long sigh. "You really want to know?" "Of course I want to know." His co-worker's tone turned serious. "If it's something bad." "It's not that bad." Peter swiveled in his chair to face David's desk, and rested his chin on his knuckles. "You know I took Trish out to dinner last night?" "Yeah. She hit you with her purse?" He couldn't hold back a smirk at this idea, no matter how painful it would have been for him. "She doesn't own a purse, David. Anyway, it was a double date with an acquaintance of hers and the woman he's seeing, and this acquaintance is a co-worker of her ex-boyfriend." "Okay." Pause. "I could see that as slightly unnerving. Who's the guy?" "The acquaintance or the ex? Because the acquaintance will be in tomorrow with some stuff." "The ex, come on, Pete." "I hate it when you call me that." Beat. "He's an FBI agent with the Missing Persons Squad out of New York. They dated for a few months in Orlando but he definitely made an impression on her." "Yeah?" "Yeah, you can tell. She's well educated on law enforcement and legal procedure. Very smart." He said this last part with a small smirk, trying not to brag. "Anyway, I guess Trish got back in touch with the guy when she moved up and she knows the guys he works with, so. it's not all prehistory." "You've got nothing to worry about." "Oh, I know." Of this, he was confident. "It's just one of those quirky coincidences in life. I love quirky coincidences in life." "Hey, then it should be right up your alley." Peter laughed out loud. "Pretty much, yeah." He grabbed the phone again, and this time, made the call.
The second day of the Dobson case.
Trish adjusted the focus on the electron microscope for the third time, and finally her lab sample came into focus. She couldn't hold back a small smile. She really loved it when she got science to work with her, rather than for her; although for her wasn't bad, she always felt like she was cheating science out of a contribution. She made a couple notes on the sample, then stepped back to put the whole thing in perspective as her new boss, Chris Kirkpatrick, who looked vaguely like some guy she could've or might've gone to school with, stuck his head in the door. He was "that guy," or the one about which there were 98 Alias jokes made because he apparently bore a resemblance to that show's character of Weiss. One thing Chris and Weiss shared in common was the odd sense of humor. "It doesn't bite, you know." "Shut up, Chris." Derrick would've glowered at her for the comment, but Chris just smiled wider. "Oh, I have no doubt you could make me, Tristan," he said, using her full name, which she hadn't been called in years. "Seriously, Trish, they really owe you an office by now, and if I had one I'd give it to you." "They do not owe me anything," she rolled her eyes. "You've been in this longer than I have, you're better than half the guys, and you've got the street cred of a cop. You need an office. I can start you off though." "Can you now?" Uh-oh. Something was coming. Kirkpatrick produced a paper plate, on which sat a green Jell-O mold, in which was firmly ensconced one of the scant Newark CSI office staplers. Trish started laughing. "How in the hell did you get that in there?" "Took me a while. I saw it on some show on BBC America, just had to give it a try." He passed the plate across to her, and she poked at it before setting it down on a nearby empty workspace. "Besides, you looked like you could use some loosening up." "Didn't think I was that bad." "Oh, you're not, but everybody needs to get their mind blown once in a while, don't you think? Keeps us fresh." "Did you really mean to say 'mind' or something else?" He was pink and laughing. "I meant what I said. Honestly." "Right. Uh-huh. Sure." She smirked. "Oh, while you're here, I've got to duck out for a bit later this morning. I'll be back in an hour or so. I'll be." "With Peter, right." Chris was nodding. "He's not all there, is he?" "No," she admitted carefully, "but he's a whole lot more there than the rest of us who claim to be all there."
Danny double-checked the contents of the binder, then closed it and set it on the edge of his desk, lest he forget it when it was time to take it with him. His social worker friend - or, now, more accurately, his social worker girlfriend - had been invaluable in putting it together and would want a full report on how it went over, and leaving it in the back seat of his car was simply not an option. "When do you go?" Martin said, walking by, trying to look uninterested when he was in fact obsessively interested. Danny just chuckled. He had seen some weird cases of dating behavior, and had at some point been one of those cases, but Fitzgerald struck him as the type to be above that. "Eleven," he said, "Good God, it's not like I'm dropping off a bomb, would you let go?" Martin sighed. "I can't help it." "Martin, you're acting the part of the immature individualist." Danny leaned forward on his desk, trying to get anything across to his compatriot. "I thought that was my job." When Fitzgerald didn't answer, Taylor kept pushing, hoping for some reaction that would make sense. "How badly did she get to you, man? Why are you acting like this? You're not this kind of guy." "Maybe." Martin sounded unconvinced. "Okay, through all the stuff I put her through, Trish was always there for me. You know after the Samir thing? She showed up at my place." "I know, she was here looking for you." "The first thing she said to me was 'What can I do?' That's all she said. And she wouldn't let me not let her save me." He sighed, realizing how expository and odd this all sounded. "I've had my fair share of ex- girlfriends and none have been as sacrificial as she is. That's what shakes me. Doesn't seem right to just let that go." "Should've figured that out before you left her. You left her, Martin." "I know." Pause. "I was a jackass, wasn't I?" "Not my call to make." Danny looked the other agent straight in the eyes and fired the fatal round. "But do you want her back?" Martin froze, and he swore he felt his heart stop.
Vacation, somewhere far enough away from Orlando but not that far away. They had been standing in the hotel room and he had been flipping channels on the television when it had all started. There was a sudden burst of noise from downstairs, and when they reached the hall they figured out it was some sort of security scare. She'd taken off, and he had grabbed her and yanked her back, almost pulling her arm right out of the socket. "Martin!" she had hissed. "Someone needs help!" "Let security cover it," he'd insisted. "We're not working, and we're not prepared. I'm not armed. God knows what you could walk into." "Do you honestly think I care?" she'd said, and by the time the noise had died down had walked back into the hotel room and slammed the door.
Peter could remember the moment he honestly thought he was going to die. It hadn't been when the gun had been pulled, nor when he realized he was the only thing standing between it and its target - he had to take that shot or someone innocent would. It wasn't as the first bullet ripped into him, through him, nor the second, third, fourth or even fifth. It hadn't anything to do with that day. It had come three weeks later, when he had come off the injured reserve and the desk duty and was retaking his firearms test. When he'd first taken it, he'd gotten it right off, near perfectly. He'd been proud of that. This time, he pulled the gun from his holster, raised it to fire, and dropped it almost instantly. When he finally got a grip on it, he had to fight it every now and then to keep it in line. He'd gone back to the doctor and asked for a repeat analysis of his post-surgical effects. They'd told him there would be some damage but they had not expected how badly. They told him there was severe nerve damage, a little memory loss, a few other possible side effects. Sometimes he wondered if somewhere down the line something else would spring up that he didn't know about. But he knew then that he was done being a cop, and he had no idea what to do. Somehow he'd found his way into being an Assistant District Attorney, working as a department liaison while he went back to night school and finished the final half of studying for his law degree. Now he was on to sociology, volunteer social work, something. He couldn't leave the world out of his world, or he'd quite honestly die painfully. But Peter Christie didn't know how to give up either. He was belligerent in that way. And he'd thought nobody could possibly be so vehemently stubborn until he'd met Trish McCullough. He'd come down to the crime lab to pick up some results that were pending for him personally, and she had been the one standing in the hallway, both dispensing and taking advice at the same time. She'd gotten into an argument with one of her co-workers about collection procedures and before he'd known it he was standing there watching her defend it. He'd offered to buy her a drink that same afternoon, and she'd smiled and readily accepted. She also loved life. And nothing was going to scare him out of loving her.
Author: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
Rating: PG
Summary: Post-fic to "Underground Railroad," a lighthearted piece that answers exactly who Danny was on that date with, and also why Martin is so tweaked about that particular event.
Spoilers: Underground Railroad
Disclaimer: Without A Trace is not mine. It's the property of CBS and its production company and creators and so forth. However, this fic and all original content in it IS mine, and if you wish to repost it, please let me know at AgentThespis@msn.com, and I'll gladly let you. I also want to thank the phenomenal team at WAT, especially the delightful Eric Close, for a show that got me hooked from day one. Jeremy Piven and the Cupid team for inspiration. All the Coupling fans out there - Peter is based on the great work of Jack Davenport. And I owe Jennifer Paige for "Beautiful."
The day before.
"That can't be healthy for you," he said, feeling the sudden urge to roll his eyes. She scoffed, eying the five billion and one various ice cream flavors in the frozen food aisle. "So what? I'll die younger, but I'll die happy. I'm 32, Martin, I'm not dead yet, or even close." "I know. Believe me, I know." Trish laughed, shifting the cell phone on her shoulder as she opened one of the cold cases to find a carton of her usual Breyers French Vanilla. She grabbed one, put it into the cart, hesitated, and went back for a carton of Caramel Praline Fudge. They'd make an ice cream flavor out of anything. "French Vanilla," he said on instinct. Now she laughed. "Yes. And Caramel Fudge." "You're branching out. I'm shocked." "Are not." She mentally reviewed her shopping list in her head, and made the short walk to the produce section. She needed some ingredients for the taco salad her brother was attempting to make this evening. Handling a head of iceberg lettuce, she said randomly, "You think lettuce makes as good a silencer as a potato?" "They're both large blunt objects," he theorized. "What, is that MacGyver I hear in your head?" "I always wanted to be The Equalizer." Martin just chuckled. He'd heard all this before.
On the day of the Dobson case.
Danny caught Martin looking at him suspiciously again. And he knew it had nothing to do with all the uneventful surveillance tapes they were going through. "What?" he said, exasperated, turning around in his chair. "What the hell do you want, Fitzgerald? You are severely freaking me out here." "You know what I want." "You want to know who he is." "I do want to know who he is, and I want to know what happened." Taylor leaned back in his chair. "You know, for someone who makes a point of stating that Trish is your ex-girlfriend, you really take an interest in what happens with her." Martin grumbled. "Okay, you double-date with my ex-girlfriend and this new guy, of course I want to know what happens. Two people I care about and two people who could be sociopaths." "You care. I'm touched." Danny chuckled. "My date was not a sociopath, thank you." "Who the hell is this guy, though?" "His name is Peter Christie, and according to Trish, he just transferred in to the D.A.'s office in Jersey. He's British, originally from London. Spent some time in law enforcement, actually, until he was shot. The surgery took hours and screwed with his nerves and reaction time, and he couldn't get back to duty. He went and became a lawyer." Danny couldn't resist a quip. "Apparently she has a thing for law enforcement guys." "I'm going to ignore that last part. Give me details." "I gave you details." Danny paused. "You don't actually feel threatened by a guy she's been on one date with who can't handle a gun anymore, do you?" Martin muttered something. "What?" "I had this weird dream last night." "Is this something you really want to say?" "Shut up for a second. I was calling Trish on her cell phone. She was grocery shopping. And we were talking." "About?" "Ice cream flavors, and using lettuce as a silencer." "Can you?" "I don't know. But the point is that I don't have dreams, and even when I do, she stopped being in them years ago. It's weird, and that it happens before she's out with this, whoever the hell this guy is. it's very weird." Danny looked skeptical, but nodded. "You read too much into things, Fitzgerald." "Whatever." More film advancing. Clicks on another keyboard. Martin took a long drink of coffee. He needed to calm his nerves. "Hey, produce in dreams equals fertility." Instantaneous choking. He had to swallow quickly, looking at Danny with surprised eyes, barely managing to push out a "What?" "I'm looking at this dream dictionary. Produce, it says, represents fertility. How long did you two talk about lettuce?" "Let's . let's get back to the tape." "Don't be one of those guys, Martin." "One of which guys?" he said, still trying to keep his eyes on the film if only so he couldn't show the other agent the cross between irritation and mortification he hadn't been able to hold back. "Those guys that dump a girl and then bitch and moan for the rest of their lives because they screwed up and aren't honest enough with themselves to admit it." He couldn't hold back a groan. "I am not one of those guys." "You're starting to sound like one." "Am not." "You are!" Danny was grinning widely now, knowing he had plenty of ammunition to fire at will. "Besides," he said flippantly, turning back to the video screens with well partitioned interest, "if you really want to see this guy, I've got to go by his office tomorrow." "What?" Martin blurted, nearly choking again. Taylor was just nodding. "He's got an interest in sociology, possibly doing some volunteer social work. I told him I'd see what I could find out and run it by, you know, since I have some experience." Beat, just enough to make Martin squirm. "It's not like I need body armor to go across the Hudson and drop paperwork." Martin was still staring crazily at him. "It's not some coalition, Fitz," Danny continued, anything to make him stop looking like he'd just said he'd killed Martin's cat. "It's not us against you. It's not anybody against you. Maybe you should just let that go." "Yeah." His voice was soft. "Except." "Except you can't." He just nodded, unable to admit it, even to himself.
"This is it. This is it. I am so done with this." Jace McCullough signed off, then pulled off his headset and dropped his globe-shaped paperweight into the drawer. "You'd think they'd understand simple English. I know I have a college degree but it's not like I'm Ivy League or anything." "Such is the world," another controller down the line quipped, and Jace just glared in his direction. He spun round in his chair to see his sister behind him, arms folded across her chest, trying to keep from smirking. "What? It's not that funny." "It's not funny. I'm just used to you." She clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly as he stood out of the chair and they began to walk off the Newark TRACON floor. He cast a half-annoyed look in her direction. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere with Peter?" She shook her head. "Not tonight. You know I give you at least one night a week." "Yeah, but I never know which one." "You want me to schedule it? Like Scrabble?" Jace just rolled his eyes. "What's up?" "Not much. I got to hang out in the super's office for a while. He has some really cool toys. He has stuff Derrick would've killed for. But I'm much less intimidated by Chris than I ever was by Derrick." "You were intimidated by Derrick?" "Well, given that I had a lot on my plate at the time." "Right." Jace nodded, grabbing his jacket from his locker and slipping into it. "This isn't going to be another one of those Martin conversations, is it?" "Another what?" "You know. You talk about him more than you think you do." "Don't." "Trish, as your brother and most prominent male figure, I know." He was looking at her pointedly but holding back an outright little laugh. "Why don't you just admit that you liked the guy and it got screwed up?" "I did. I do. It did." Trish ran a hand through her hair. "He's still a friend, okay? When he wants to be. I know I'm overprotective of the people in my life and Martin isn't an exception to that rule. But I've got Peter." "I know. But you worry about Martin." "Yeah, because he merits cause for alarm every now and then." "Trish, the man was straighter than fiberboard, come on. Aside from a couple random experiments in new procedures, you couldn't force him out of line." "Road cones, Jace. He utilizes road cones." "Whatever works, right? Don't tell me you think you drove him off his head." "He wouldn't need my help, and I wouldn't need his for that." "Well I think you both got it." Jace shrugged, knowing his sister wouldn't give another inch. "Just my opinion. Besides, I like Peter." "Oh, my God." She stopped dead in the parking lot. "You actually like one of my boyfriends?" "You've had three," he corrected. "And yes, I do. He's a different kind of man." "Different than Martin, you mean." Jace nodded. "Very different. But fundamentally the same." "What the hell does that mean?" she replied, but he turned and headed for the car without another word.
Peter Christie nearly dropped the phone and it swiveled in his hand before he could get a solid grip on it again. Ever since he'd been shot, that happened a lot - one of the effects of severe nerve damage. But he was fairly sure this physical foul-up had less to do with almost a day of surgery and more to do with a little emotional psych-out he was giving himself. He put the phone back on the cradle, sighed and decided to make the call later. "Peter, what the." "What?" "You okay over there?" The D.A. looked over at his co-worker across the room. "David, you know I drop a lot of things." David nodded. "You're acting weird today, though. Weirder than usual." Peter rolled his eyes. How not being weird had come to be weird, he didn't know. "In what sense, O expert therapist?" A lot of the time he could turn to David for serious advice at dealing with his medical deficiencies and insecurities, but a lot of the time David was just playing analyst, and it was hard to tell which. "Your cat die yesterday?" "I don't own a cat, David," Peter deadpanned. "Okay, then what?" A long sigh. "You really want to know?" "Of course I want to know." His co-worker's tone turned serious. "If it's something bad." "It's not that bad." Peter swiveled in his chair to face David's desk, and rested his chin on his knuckles. "You know I took Trish out to dinner last night?" "Yeah. She hit you with her purse?" He couldn't hold back a smirk at this idea, no matter how painful it would have been for him. "She doesn't own a purse, David. Anyway, it was a double date with an acquaintance of hers and the woman he's seeing, and this acquaintance is a co-worker of her ex-boyfriend." "Okay." Pause. "I could see that as slightly unnerving. Who's the guy?" "The acquaintance or the ex? Because the acquaintance will be in tomorrow with some stuff." "The ex, come on, Pete." "I hate it when you call me that." Beat. "He's an FBI agent with the Missing Persons Squad out of New York. They dated for a few months in Orlando but he definitely made an impression on her." "Yeah?" "Yeah, you can tell. She's well educated on law enforcement and legal procedure. Very smart." He said this last part with a small smirk, trying not to brag. "Anyway, I guess Trish got back in touch with the guy when she moved up and she knows the guys he works with, so. it's not all prehistory." "You've got nothing to worry about." "Oh, I know." Of this, he was confident. "It's just one of those quirky coincidences in life. I love quirky coincidences in life." "Hey, then it should be right up your alley." Peter laughed out loud. "Pretty much, yeah." He grabbed the phone again, and this time, made the call.
The second day of the Dobson case.
Trish adjusted the focus on the electron microscope for the third time, and finally her lab sample came into focus. She couldn't hold back a small smile. She really loved it when she got science to work with her, rather than for her; although for her wasn't bad, she always felt like she was cheating science out of a contribution. She made a couple notes on the sample, then stepped back to put the whole thing in perspective as her new boss, Chris Kirkpatrick, who looked vaguely like some guy she could've or might've gone to school with, stuck his head in the door. He was "that guy," or the one about which there were 98 Alias jokes made because he apparently bore a resemblance to that show's character of Weiss. One thing Chris and Weiss shared in common was the odd sense of humor. "It doesn't bite, you know." "Shut up, Chris." Derrick would've glowered at her for the comment, but Chris just smiled wider. "Oh, I have no doubt you could make me, Tristan," he said, using her full name, which she hadn't been called in years. "Seriously, Trish, they really owe you an office by now, and if I had one I'd give it to you." "They do not owe me anything," she rolled her eyes. "You've been in this longer than I have, you're better than half the guys, and you've got the street cred of a cop. You need an office. I can start you off though." "Can you now?" Uh-oh. Something was coming. Kirkpatrick produced a paper plate, on which sat a green Jell-O mold, in which was firmly ensconced one of the scant Newark CSI office staplers. Trish started laughing. "How in the hell did you get that in there?" "Took me a while. I saw it on some show on BBC America, just had to give it a try." He passed the plate across to her, and she poked at it before setting it down on a nearby empty workspace. "Besides, you looked like you could use some loosening up." "Didn't think I was that bad." "Oh, you're not, but everybody needs to get their mind blown once in a while, don't you think? Keeps us fresh." "Did you really mean to say 'mind' or something else?" He was pink and laughing. "I meant what I said. Honestly." "Right. Uh-huh. Sure." She smirked. "Oh, while you're here, I've got to duck out for a bit later this morning. I'll be back in an hour or so. I'll be." "With Peter, right." Chris was nodding. "He's not all there, is he?" "No," she admitted carefully, "but he's a whole lot more there than the rest of us who claim to be all there."
Danny double-checked the contents of the binder, then closed it and set it on the edge of his desk, lest he forget it when it was time to take it with him. His social worker friend - or, now, more accurately, his social worker girlfriend - had been invaluable in putting it together and would want a full report on how it went over, and leaving it in the back seat of his car was simply not an option. "When do you go?" Martin said, walking by, trying to look uninterested when he was in fact obsessively interested. Danny just chuckled. He had seen some weird cases of dating behavior, and had at some point been one of those cases, but Fitzgerald struck him as the type to be above that. "Eleven," he said, "Good God, it's not like I'm dropping off a bomb, would you let go?" Martin sighed. "I can't help it." "Martin, you're acting the part of the immature individualist." Danny leaned forward on his desk, trying to get anything across to his compatriot. "I thought that was my job." When Fitzgerald didn't answer, Taylor kept pushing, hoping for some reaction that would make sense. "How badly did she get to you, man? Why are you acting like this? You're not this kind of guy." "Maybe." Martin sounded unconvinced. "Okay, through all the stuff I put her through, Trish was always there for me. You know after the Samir thing? She showed up at my place." "I know, she was here looking for you." "The first thing she said to me was 'What can I do?' That's all she said. And she wouldn't let me not let her save me." He sighed, realizing how expository and odd this all sounded. "I've had my fair share of ex- girlfriends and none have been as sacrificial as she is. That's what shakes me. Doesn't seem right to just let that go." "Should've figured that out before you left her. You left her, Martin." "I know." Pause. "I was a jackass, wasn't I?" "Not my call to make." Danny looked the other agent straight in the eyes and fired the fatal round. "But do you want her back?" Martin froze, and he swore he felt his heart stop.
Vacation, somewhere far enough away from Orlando but not that far away. They had been standing in the hotel room and he had been flipping channels on the television when it had all started. There was a sudden burst of noise from downstairs, and when they reached the hall they figured out it was some sort of security scare. She'd taken off, and he had grabbed her and yanked her back, almost pulling her arm right out of the socket. "Martin!" she had hissed. "Someone needs help!" "Let security cover it," he'd insisted. "We're not working, and we're not prepared. I'm not armed. God knows what you could walk into." "Do you honestly think I care?" she'd said, and by the time the noise had died down had walked back into the hotel room and slammed the door.
Peter could remember the moment he honestly thought he was going to die. It hadn't been when the gun had been pulled, nor when he realized he was the only thing standing between it and its target - he had to take that shot or someone innocent would. It wasn't as the first bullet ripped into him, through him, nor the second, third, fourth or even fifth. It hadn't anything to do with that day. It had come three weeks later, when he had come off the injured reserve and the desk duty and was retaking his firearms test. When he'd first taken it, he'd gotten it right off, near perfectly. He'd been proud of that. This time, he pulled the gun from his holster, raised it to fire, and dropped it almost instantly. When he finally got a grip on it, he had to fight it every now and then to keep it in line. He'd gone back to the doctor and asked for a repeat analysis of his post-surgical effects. They'd told him there would be some damage but they had not expected how badly. They told him there was severe nerve damage, a little memory loss, a few other possible side effects. Sometimes he wondered if somewhere down the line something else would spring up that he didn't know about. But he knew then that he was done being a cop, and he had no idea what to do. Somehow he'd found his way into being an Assistant District Attorney, working as a department liaison while he went back to night school and finished the final half of studying for his law degree. Now he was on to sociology, volunteer social work, something. He couldn't leave the world out of his world, or he'd quite honestly die painfully. But Peter Christie didn't know how to give up either. He was belligerent in that way. And he'd thought nobody could possibly be so vehemently stubborn until he'd met Trish McCullough. He'd come down to the crime lab to pick up some results that were pending for him personally, and she had been the one standing in the hallway, both dispensing and taking advice at the same time. She'd gotten into an argument with one of her co-workers about collection procedures and before he'd known it he was standing there watching her defend it. He'd offered to buy her a drink that same afternoon, and she'd smiled and readily accepted. She also loved life. And nothing was going to scare him out of loving her.