Title: Cold
Fandom: Whitechapel
Pairings/Characters: Kent
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: You think I was smart enough to create and own these characters? Think again! Not mine.
Summary: Kent was 22 when he saw his first dead body
Author's note: Well yesterday, a week into my first Nursing placement, (and at only 18 years old) I had my first patient death, and I had to lay the body out and comfort the gentleman's poor family. So I am venting a little bit with this fic, channelling my feelings into Kent, because the shift was quite upsetting as I'd never seen a dead body before, let alone laid someone out. So, anyway, do enjoy, it's a bit morbid, but hey, this is Whitechapel!
Kent was 22 when he saw his first dead body.
It was also his first murder case with the Whitechapel team; Himself, Miles, Fitz, McCormack and Saunders, all working as a unit. Him being fresh out of university, just a kid really.
The body itself was of a nineteen year old male, stabbed once in the chest, a botched mugging. Messy. The young man's belongings had been flung down by the corpse, the wallet still packed with money and credit cards, the mugger having obviously panicked and fled, forgetting the purpose of the original crime.
Jake Mcarthy had been his name. Kent could still recall this even five years later, the name forever etched into his mind, staying there despite the hundreds of other victims names that had filtered in and out of his consciousness. He would remember that one name until the day he died, he was sure.
When his gaze first fell upon Jake's body had Kent immediately frozen. He didn't know what he'd expected, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him.
The young man was on his back, head tilted to the side, blood staining his entire torso and just creeping up his neck and chin. A few stray spots also littered his face, like some sort of morbid child's finger paints. But what had startled the young DC so, was the fact that Jake's eyes were wide open, unmoving and staring. The bright blue colour now muted and dull, glazed over in death, but still youthful and human. Kent could imagine Jake as a child, staring up at his parents with those big baby blue eyes, always getting what he wanted. The picture was silent and not very clear, as Kent had no other knowledge of this young man than what he was currently presented with. But he could see the life that used to be in this person, even if now all that remained was the muted colour of his eyes and the bright hue of his blood.
His skin had a pallor to it, the blood retreating from the efferent blood vessels and cooling from it's lack of movement. The liquid slowly coagulating in the blood vessels. Yet when Kent's gloved hand had touched the young mans', the skin had still held a touch of warmth, not much, and what warmth remained quickly disappeared when faced with the cold London winter.
Miles had looked at him, concerned when he'd barely moved from his spot and still continued to stare at the corpse as if he'd seen a ghost, his skin almost as pale as that of Jake's.
"You alright Lad?"
He hadn't trusted himself to answer and instead had just nodded, his fingers agitatedly worrying the edge of one latex glove.
Jake's clothes had been stylish, clearly fashion conscious. His hair had been gelled precisely and his converses just tattered enough to show he wore them plenty, but clean enough to show he looked after them. In his wallet a photo of himself and a pretty young girl smiling at the camera was at the front, his girlfriend presumably.
Kent could see himself in this person. He could see the life, he could see that Jake was loved, and cared for. But now Jake was simply a victim, a case number, a body to be studied, now laid in an alley, stone cold, with a knife wound in his chest.
He couldn't understand the other Detectives milling about, the forensics, the PC's, all treating this as just another case, routine. Which it was, but to Kent, the new boy, it was a person. Somebody's son, brother, friend, boyfriend.
That was the first time Emerson Kent cried in the station's car park, cried for the death of someone he didn't even know, had never heard speak, nor laugh. He didn't see it as a weakness. Kent believed that the day he could walk onto a crime scene and see someone's body laying face down on the dirty streets of London and not be affected by it would be the day that he couldn't look in the mirror and be proud of what he saw.
Kent has wept for almost every murder victim since.