Title: Human Landscapes
Rating: PG-13 to R
Characters: Dani Reese, ensemble
Summary: the sound of the city tonight / keeps my dreams and my demons alive. Reese and Crews solve the murder of two young drug dealers.
Spoilers: Set after Serious Control Issues, slight spoilers to Fill it Up
Disclaimers: Does not belong to me even though I wish it was.
A/N: Much and many thanks to my betas butterflykiki, nuitbelle and for denynothing1 and 15lbpurebunny for putting up with my thousand and one questions. Any faults and errors are mine.
Summary taken from Tom McRae's Sounds of the City and the title from Nazim Hikmet's HUMAN LANDSCAPES FROM MY COUNTRY (An Epic Novel in Verse)
did you fall / on your way /
it's a long way down
-- Finally, The Frames
1.
The city lived. It pulsed in the night. She shouldn't be here, watching the cars pass by, contemplating doing what she knew she shouldn't be doing.
Her mother used to tell her stories of Odysseus and the siren's call, how his men had to tie him up to keep him safe and how he would cry out to be set free. Free to follow the sirens that would lead to his ultimate destruction. Back then she didn't understand how someone would want to willingly destroy themselves that they had to be tied up to be saved.
She had no rope but the white knuckled grip on the wheel and the debate raging in her head. She shouldn't be here.
-/-
Dani was five when her father first brought her to Parker Center, a detective, recently made sergeant.
"I just have to pick up some papers." He told her. They were supposed to go to a birthday party but they stopped by the station on the way. He sat Dani on his chair. "Be a good little girl and behave."
She nodded solemnly, wide eyed and impressed at all the men in uniform. Dani loved looking at the uniforms she craned her neck but found she was too small, so she clambered up her father's desk. They all had the same uniform her father some times wore.
The other cops patted her head and gave her candy and by the time her father returned her ponytail was askew and her hands were sticky.
Her father frowned, took out his handkerchief. "Wipe your mouth and hands, Dani."
"Aw," she heard one of the police officers, "it's just candy, Jack."
"Talk to me when you have kids," her father returned then lifted her off the table. "Next time don't eat candy on my desk, Dani."
-/-
The call came as the morning wound down. It was a slow morning and most of it spent on paperwork and trying to ignore Crews' new mutant fruit.
Reese was on her second cup of coffee and debated about getting a third when her phone let out a series of shrieks. She answered it on the fourth ring and listened to dispatch give vague details about their new case: possible double homicide, uniforms already on the way to the crime scene. Just as she finished jotting down the information Crews placed a yogurt on her desk. She stared at it.
"Lunch," he explained.
She reached behind for her jacket.
"It's not going to bite, Reese."
"Yeah, okay," she pocketed the yogurt, "thanks."
-/-
Her father didn't like his new partner and expressed it in a number of ways, coming home every night with a new laundry lists of complaints: she was a rookie, she was too eager, she was a woman, she talked too much, listened too little, expected to be treated just like one of the guys… He went on and on but as weeks moved into months his complaints lessened then one day he came home with a puzzled frown and his complaints stopped.
Her mother remarked, "You haven't talked about your partner in a while."
Jack put down his paper to look at her mother thoughtfully then shrugged. "She's not so bad."
It was the highest accolade Jack Reese could ever give.
The first time Dani met Karen Davis she was fourteen, in that awkward stage caught between actively rebelling and aimlessly following people around. Her mother didn't know what to do with her and her father's response to any rebellion was strict discipline.
Her father had dragged her in the station after her mother caught her trying to escape her room. She was supposed to go to a concert, sulking all week when her mother sided with her father and forbade her to go to the concert.
Dani was determined to watch the concert and devised a plan to leave the house. Unfortunately, luck wasn't on her side and just as she was about to leave disaster struck: Her mother entered her room at the same moment she'd stuck her foot out the window.
It was almost comical, Dani straddling the window half her body outside the house and her mother, frozen in surprise.
Her father was furious, dragged her to the station so he could 'keep an eye on her'. He deposited her on his workstation and ordered her to stay put or he'll send her marching into one of the cells.
If Dani were older she would have marched out of the station but she knew her father enough to know his threats were never idle. She didn't like being in the station or near other cops. The way they treated her father anyone would think he walked on gold.
In retaliation she climbed his table and sat on top, placed her Doc Martens on the nearest chair and proceeded to glare at everyone.
"Drugs and money."
Startled, Dani looked up. It was her father's new partner. Karen something. The one who talked too much. "What?"
"Statistical fact, 85 of the crimes committed in the city is motivated by drugs and money."
She was fourteen but if there was something she was good at, it was smelling bullshit. "You made that up."
"Oh, yeah?" Karen crossed her arms, "what makes you say that?"
Dani smirked. "I can always tell when people are lying."
"Can you now?"
"My dad taught me." It was a lie. Her father didn't like her knowing anything about being a cop. He'd lectured her about staying away from the force. As if she needed any incentive to stay away. She hated cops. "Anyway, he's your boss."
"Technically, but he's also my partner."
"There's a difference?"
"Worlds," Karen said in a way that made Dani angrier, as if she knew something Dani didn't. "You'll find out once you get here."
"I'll never be like him." She vowed and stamped her foot on the chair for emphasis.
"That's a shame," Karen pushed Dani's foot from the chair and started dusting.
Dani told herself she didn't want to know but still couldn't help blurting, "Yeah?" Dani injected a more belligerent tone, "Why's that?"
Karen placed the folder on the table, looked Dani in the eye. "Because I think you're natural police."
"You're joking."
"About being a cop?" She raised her eyebrows at Dani, "I never joke about that."
Dani stared at Karen, not quite knowing how to respond.
"Oh, and Dani?" Karen sat on her chair, "I don't mind you sitting on my table but if I catch you putting your feet on my chair again, I'll shoot you."
-/-
"Are you sure this is the building Stark told you about?"
Crews unbuckled his seatbelt, poked his head out the window like a dog. "That's what he told me." He pulled his head back in and mulled her dashboard, "Maybe you need GPS."
"I have GPS," she cut off her engines, "I just don't use it."
"GPS is a very helpful device."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Then tell me why you don't have one."
He looked at her head tilted and blinked like an owl. "Because I don't want the Man to track me."
Reese stepped out of the car before her eyes could pop out from rolling so much. "Are we back to this thing?" She looked up the building, even with her sunglasses she was almost blinded by the sun then looked at the street. "I don't see any black and whites. Call Stark again."
"Or we could use your never used GPS."
"I don't get lost," Reese tamped down on the urge to smack him across the head. She didn't need Anger Management Issues on top of everything else on her file. "Call Stark."
"Say 'please' first," Crews said, taking out his phone, "it's only good to be polite."
"Please call Stark before I shove your phone up your—"
He beamed at her and placed the phone against his ear, "That wasn't so hard was it?"
-/-
Leyla Ebadi came to America to study. Her father was a businessman; while not exactly rich her family was wealthy enough to send their daughter to the best schools their money could buy. Leyla studied literature; her brother, Darius had left a few months earlier to return to Iran. He studied to be a lawyer and was active in the Iranian Student Coalition. He waved around books about Marx and spoke of the Shah's injustices and working for a better future.
"I don't think you should talk like that when you get home," she cautioned him.
Her brother was not impressed. "You're only talking like that because you're used to talking softly."
"Just promise to be careful," she begged him. "Iran isn't America."
Darius smiled. "Always."
And then she was alone in a different country and culture, she found her brother's friends too taxing and while she enjoyed the talks about change in Iran Leyla didn't share the same passion Darius had and found herself drifting from the ISC.
Leyla had few friends but frequently found herself in the church, the Ebadis were one of the few Christian families in Iran. Church became a refuge and this was where Leyla met a young officer of the law, a pious young man who went by the name Jack Reese.
They met entirely by accident. Young Officer Reese had gone to donate his meager salary to the Blessed Sisters charity and had somehow missed seeing Leyla. He tripped and fell and Leyla had raised hell. The next day, Jack returned to the church but instead of donations he had flowers and Leyla was charmed. And then they fell in love.
It was only when Dani was older did she really understand the story behind that simple statement. It was 1977 and despite everything, Leyla was still a Persian woman and Jack was still a white American man. But for the purposes and intents of her mother's story, it was that simple: They fell in love.
Leyla kept in touch with her family through letters and long distance calls but it was Darius who kept her appraised about the political situation in Iran. Leyla frequently broached the subject of migrating to America but this was one subject father and son were united about: Iran was their home and they would not leave, for her father it was because he was secure in his knowledge that all of this would blow over, that Iran has endured and will continue to endure. Darius' believed different, he believed that progress will happen.
Happy as she was about her life in America she still worried about her family and then it happened: A year later the first major political demonstration broke out – the reports were varied and when the news finally came it was exactly as she feared. The soldiers opened fire into the crowd, 70 people were killed, including her brother.
A few months later Leyla Ebadi married Officer Jack Reese in a small private ceremony among their closest friends and in 1979 at the height of the bloody Iranian revolution Jack and Leyla's only daughter was born.
-/-
As it turned out, they weren't lost. They were in the right place but the wrong side of the building.
Crews was a crap navigator or more likely he did it on purpose. Reese wouldn't put it past him. After climbing the steps Reese finally saw the uniforms.
Stark was already on the steps, thumb stuck on his belt with a smirk.
"You got lost?"
"No." She nodded to the apartment SID and a few uniforms swarmed in and out, one or two had masks on, "What happened here?"
"Double homicide, neighbor found the bodies."
Crews stepped away from her and crouched near the doorknob, "No sign of forced entry."
"They knew the killer," she offered before stepping past him and ground to a halt. The windows were covered with cardboard and duct tape and the room was littered with garbage bags, broken bottles, tubes and a strong smell of piss, ammonium and a lot of things filled the air. God-fucking-damn.
Eight months back in the force and since that time she didn't catch one homicide directly connected with drugs except that one time in the crack den her first week with Crews, something she didn't care to relive and now this.
"Reese?"
"Something wrong, detective?" Stark didn't even bother to hide the amusement in his voice.
"It's a meth lab," Reese refused to look at anywhere but the bodies on the floor. "Drug deal gone wrong?"
"Reese," Crews called again. She glanced at him. He was looking at her intently worry and concern in his eyes.
She turned back and pulled out her gloves. "SID done with the forensic work?" One of the SID guys nodded. "Then open the windows."
Reese didn't wait for them to act and proceeded to work the scene. Or at least she tried to but someone caught her elbow, Reese spun around, fist clenched.
Crews immediately let go of her arm. "I'm thirsty, Reese, I think we should get coffee."
"I'm good." She returned, determined to work.
"I'm not," he was sincere and coaxing, "C'mon, I get lost." She didn't move and he added, "Crime scene will still be here when we get back. It's just five minutes."
SID were still processing, air was clearing and it was a sunny day in the Greater Los Angeles area and she was standing in a meth lab. Her head was pounding.
"Get this room aired out," she told the SID girl with the camera then to Crews, "Let's go."
"I think," Crews began again, "the coffee shop downstairs has a fruit selection."
"How the hell do you know that?"
Crews smiled at her, open, eyes crinkling at the corners. Sometimes Reese still found his seeming lack of eyelashes disturbing. "Fruit makes the world go round, Reese."
