Witchblade: A New Wielder
Author's Note:
Straying away from X-Men fanfic for a change of pace, and because Sara went whispering in my ear and asked me to write this. So the usual disclaimer applies; I don't own, so you don't sue. I can't even claim the idea was mine, this is Sara's fault! And for everyone reading this who loved the Witchblade TV show as much as I do/did: Mythic Films, one of the companies who's associated with the production of the show, is considering a DVD relaes of both seasons of the show, but aren't sure they should do it because they say they aren't sure that there's enough interest out there in a cancelled show to justify releasing a DVD. So Witchblade TV show fans out there are trying to flood their mailboxes with email asking them to release the DVD. If you'd like to have the show on DVD, email now, on with the story! Enjoy, and reviews, as always, are hugely appreciated!---Jaenelle
Chapter 1:
"Thank you," Sara Pezzini couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she took the two cups of coffee from the guy behind the counter at the coffee shop. Three cups of basic coffee, hers plain, Danny's and Jake's with cream and sugar, shouldn't have been that hard.
The guy behind the counter, whose nametag read 'Mike', seemed oblivious to her acidic sarcasm. He simply shrugged and turned to the next customer, eyes blinking owlishly in his acne-pocked face, and Sara shook her head once more as she exited the doughnut shop.
It seemed cliché to be getting her coffee from a doughnut shop; and if she'd had her pick, they would have gone to the Starbucks up the road. But Danny had insisted that he wanted his coffee from here, and it was the closest shop to the precinct where Jake was waiting for his, so Sara had been overruled.
She circled the car, skirting the front bumper of the police cruiser and leaned over to hand Danny the cardboard tray with the three cups of coffee tucked neatly inside. "Hang onto that," she admonished him dryly. "You have no idea what I had to go through to get those."
"Mike?" Danny asked with a smile.
"You knew and you didn't warn me?" Sara sounded incredulous.
Danny grinned apologetically. "It wasn't till I saw his car back there," he jerked his thumb behind him at a beat-up red Geo Metro, "That I thought to warn you. Don't worry, though; the next time we stop here he'll remember your preferences and get you what you want quickly. You probably made enough of an impression that he's not going to forget you in a hurry."
"There's going to be a next time?" Sara said acidly, standing and starting to head around the back of the car toward the driver's seat. She had just cleared the rear quarter panel when a sudden sound made her turn toward the narrow alley between the doughnut shop and the bank next door.
A small kid, looking no more than maybe eight, was standing in the alleyway, coughing hard. Sara winced at the dry, raspy sound; the child was sick. There was a backpack on the kid's back over an oversized navy-blue threadbare fleece jacket; baggy jeans and grimy sneakers completed the ensemble. There was a navy-blue baseball cap pulled low over the kid's forehead, obscuring the face, but the hands were up around the mouth as the child almost doubled over coughing. Sara paused irresolutely, wondering if she should check on the kid. Wasn't school still in? This kid should be in school. Or at least at home in bed when that cough sounded that bad.
She wasn't the only one interested in the kid, though. A tall man, skinny and reeking of cheap alcohol, stopped in front of the kid. "Hey, kid. Gimmie yer money." The kid just continued coughing. The man squeezed past the small form in the alley and started opening the kid's backpack.
The kid's head snapped up, and Sara found herself looking into a pair of bright, jade-green eyes. There was a smattering of freckles over the short, snub nose, and clear, pale skin over the rest of the child's face. And a shock of very light red hair, more blonde than red but enough red to give the kid that qualification. And even though the clothes were too baggy for Sara to determine if the kid was male or female, she would have bet the kid was a girl.
The girl turned and reached for the strap of her backpack weakly. "Stop that, it's mine," she said, but her voice was weak and thready, and raspy from coughing. The man simply yanked backward on the obviously full pack, unbalancing the child and pulling the girl backward as he pulled the backpack off her back. With impatient fingers, he yanked at the zipper, opening the main compartment of the backpack and spilling books, pencils, and notebooks out onto the alley floor.
Sara had just about enough of this. "Hey!" she said loudly, advancing on the pair in the alley, holding up her badge. "Give that back to the kid and get on your way before I arrest you for being drunk in public!" Ordinarily she would have just arrested him without warning, but it was the end of her shift and she wanted to go home. She didn't want to spend her entire afternoon off filling out paperwork for some crack-addicted drunk.
The man looked up, startled, saw her police jacket, saw her badge, and dropped the now-empty backpack, fleeing backward down the alley. Sara briefly thought about pursuing, decided she didn't want to go to the trouble, and turned to the kid instead. Crouching, she picked up the backpack and started to gather the books up. "Here you are," she said gently as she stood. "They're okay." She turned to look at the kid, who was now looking at her with equal interest and a wary curiosity.
Her first reaction was that she had miscalculated the girl's age. She wasn't eight; the eyes looking out of that too-thin-for-health face were older, the eyes she'd expect to see from an older child, perhaps ten or twelve. And those eyes…Sara stared at those green orbs for a second that seemed like an eternity, and felt the Witchblade tingle at the back of her mind. The vision that came to her mind's eye, unbidden, was that of a strawberry-blonde young woman, her body wrapped in the Witchblade's armor, fighting a group of heavily-armed thugs. And then, on the heels of that startling vision, a nagging feeling that she should help the girl.
Normally Sara made it a point of doing the exact opposite of whatever the Witchblade told her to do; the damn thing was useful but could be a damned pain in the neck sometimes. But if what she was being shown was right, this girl could be a future Blade-wielder, and Sara wanted to help the girl anyway. "I'm Detective Sara Pezzini." She held out her hand.
The girl spent a long time just staring at Sara, then slowly held out a hand. "Jade," she said. No last name, just a first name.
Sara waited for a moment, and when no other information was forthcoming, she prodded delicately, "Well, Jade…you've got a nasty cough, and it's kind of chilly. Shouldn't you be in school?"
The girl gave Sara a look filled with pity for Sara's stupidity, then said, "School let out an hour ago."
"Oh." Sara refused to be fazed by the scorn. "So shouldn't you be home, having you Mom take care of that cold?" Or Dad, she thought belatedly, thinking of all the times that her own father had been the one to shepherd her through an illness, but didn't go on further.
The kid reached for the backpack Sara held, shouldering it with a grunt that spoke eloquently of its weight. "Nah. Mom's still gone. I checked when I went past the apartment on my way to school. I don't have a key to get in, neither."
"Gone? Where is she?" Sara frowned.
Jade shrugged. "Dunno. She was supposed to get paid yesterday, and I wanted her to pick up some bread and milk but she never got home last night. Probably went to Hakeem's."
"Hakeem?" Sara frowned again. "Who's that?"
"Mom's 'friend'." Sara could hear the quotation marks around the name. "Hakeem finds Mom all her customers and gives her the discount on her beer and…and her other stuff."
Customers. Beer. 'Other stuff.' Sara's heart suddenly ached for the girl. Here Jade was, sick, probably hungry, and she should be home. Instead, her mother was drunk and probably stoned somewhere, strung out on whatever drugs she was taking and passed out at her pimp or her supplier's. "Oh, Jade." She sighed, wanting to help but not sure how. "Where do you live?"
"Richmar apartments. In Brooklyn." Sara knew the place; it was a bad neighborhood for a kid to live in, close to the red light district and rife with gangs, drugs, and prostitutes.
It was also quite a way from where they currently were. "Well, if you hang around and wait, your mom should be coming home soon." Sara said. At least, I hope so, she added silently to herself.
Jade dashed that hope with a shake of her head. "Nope. Mom never gets back before midnight if she's gone when I get out of school."
"So where are you going to stay? Do you have a friend I can take you to?" Surely there had to be someone.
Jade looked down self-consciously. "No. Nobody at school likes me. They say I stink, and my mother's an addict and my father's a john." She straightened up proudly. "I beat up Jimmy Davis for saying so."
Sara had to chuckle at that. "All right, tough girl. You start on home now, and I'll check up on you tomorrow at your place." She'd take the cruiser; she didn't want her bike stolen in that neighborhood. She'd never get it back. "Here," she said, taking a five dollar bill from her pocket, the change from her coffee, and handing it to Jade. "Get some medicine for that cough. And some food."
"Thanks, DetectivePezzini." Jade took the money, her eyes sparkling.
"Sara," Sara corrected her. "I never did like titles." Jade grinned at her, and Sara stood and headed toward the car and her waiting partner.
"Wow. I thought I'd never get my coffee," Jake commented wryly as he took his cup of now-cold coffee from Danny. "What'd you do, go all the way to Columbia for it?" when there was no answer, he looked up at Sara, sitting at her desk across from him. "Pez?"
She stared into thin air, thinking, and didn't answer. So he tried again. "Pez?" Still no answer. "Sara!"
"What? You don't have to shout, I'm right here," she said irritably, annoyed at being shaken out of her thoughts.
"Well your body might be here but your mind is like, a million miles away. Whatcha got on your mind?" Sara didn't answer, already thinking again.
Danny looked up from the paperwork he was filling out. "Not a million, more like…right around the corner, back at the doughnut shop," he told Jake, putting his pen down and leaning back in his chair. "We had an…interesting encounter back there. Well, at least Sara did."
"Really? Interesting how?" Jake switched his attention from Sara to Danny after one last look at his partner, who sat there staring into space, oblivious to the conversation. He listened as Danny described what he'd seen of the brief encounter with the street kid.
"Oh, yeah. Jade," Jake sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and grinning at the way Sara suddenly gave him her full attention at the sound of the name.
"Jade? You know her?" Sara was suddenly very interested in Jake.
Jake waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Not personally, no. But she tends to hang out in that alley by the doughnut shop. The cops give her some protection from the street people who think a kid is easy pickings, and the trash is good for doughnut scraps. And it's warm in that alley; the heat from the shop's good for that."
"What about her parents? Mom, Dad?"
Jake shrugged. "Never seen a father. As for her mother, well…the woman hooks to pay for her drugs and her alcohol. Jade's lucky she's cute, or she'd have starved by now. People give her money, and she gets food that way."
Sara shook her head. "That's not right. She's a kid, she should be worrying about schoolwork, not on where her next meal's going to come from. Hasn't anyone done anything about it?"
Jake waved his hand helplessly in the air. "What are we gonna do, Pez? Stuff like this happens all the time. There are kids like her all over the city. We can't help every one of them, as much as we'd like to."
"You could start, one kid at a time!" Sara stood up, shoving her chair back with unnecessary force and grabbing her jacket, slung over the chair back. She shrugged into it quickly, then grabbed the keys to her bike and headed for the door.
"Pez, you can't save the world!" Jake called after her.
"Sure I can!" she shot back as the door closed behind her. He looked at Danny. Danny looked at him. They both sighed in unison and shook their heads, going back to work.
