Disclaimer: I own nothing, I promise...even the gremlin agrees with me.


"So what does Destiny look like?" Mac asked the next morning.

Felicity choked on her apple juice, coughing so hard that the shade of her cheeks nearly matched that of Mac's pjs. When she could breathe again, she asked hoarsely, "What do you mean?"

Mac gave her a hard look, sliding the mass of scrambled eggs onto a small plate.

"I mean, what did Detective Destiny look like? You know, the one that ruined that gorgeous blouse I bought you for your birthday?"

Still trying to catch her breath, Felicity slowly sipped at her juice again, leaning against the counter.

"Tall, lean build, dark hair with some grey, crooked nose…oh, and these pale blue eyes, um, baby blue, I think. Kinda like looking into two chips of ice though."

Mac shrugged, her lips curving into a sly smirk.

"Doesn't sound terribly unattractive."

Felicity snorted as she speared fluffy yellow goodness with her fork. She took a bite and held a finger up with a low hum of happiness.

"No, trust me…any physically redeeming attributes are immediately negated by a personality that is more than a little prickly."

Her friend's brows rose.

"Jackass?"

Felicity made a dramatic gesture with her hand , holding it high over her head in a sweeping arc. "Of monumental proportions."

"Aaaand you're going to work with him?"

The curly-haired brunette shook her head.

"Not just him, the entire precinct will benefit from my presence, thank you."

"Now who's the ass?"

Felicity's glare was answer enough, making Mac chuckle as she sat down to enjoy her breakfast, opting for water instead of juice. Grey eyes lit up as she was struck with a thought.

"By the way, can I borrow a different pair of shoes? Those bastards over there are murder."

She shot a different glare, one intended to melt steel, at the offending articles of footwear in question, but they remained indifferent to her ire. Mac pointed towards her room on the opposite side of Felicity's.

"Help yourself, love."

Felicity planted a kiss against her friend's hair as she passed.

"You're an angel, Mac, an absolute angel."

"Yeah, yeah, tell me that after you try them all on in the next week and still have blisters. Why can't you just buy a pair of your own?"

At Felicity's incredulous glance, Mac threw her hands up.

"Alright, stupid question, I admit, I know better. Sorry I asked."

Felicity was already smoothing back her hair with another headband by the time the admission reached her ears, tugging on the hem of the blazer she'd chosen that morning. She checked herself over in the mirror once more, adding just a touch of eyeshadow. There, that looked professional enough, she supposed. Giving herself a firm nod in the glass, she blew a kiss to her friend and walked out the door.


Thankfully, the shoes she'd chosen were amazingly comfortable, encouraging her to see heels in a somewhat more favorable light. Besides, they worked perfectly with the black business suit she'd chosen to wear on her first day. The nice Sergeant who'd helped her yesterday was back at the desk again this morning, whom she discovered, went by Carl, and was more than happy to show her to Mr. Spencer's desk. The man in question waved her over as he argued with someone over the phone. He hung up abruptly as she stood at a respectable distance. He gave her a friendly smile.

"Manners must be ingrained where you come from, Ms. Sawyer."

She returned the smile with a crooked one of her own.

"Felicity, sir, and you have no idea."

He waved his hand dismissively at her as he leaned back in his chair.

"Drop the 'sir', at least. Henry works. I'm your boss, but I'm not a hardass. At least, I doubt I'll have to be with you."

Feeling less timid since no one seemed to be mentioning the incident with the unpleasant Detective Lassiter the previous morning, Felicity tilted her head at him with a curious expression.

"But you do have to be with your son? The other psychic in the department?"

His brows rose and Felicity chuckled softly at his questioning gaze.

"No psychic powers involved. I watch the news like everyone else and the family resemblance is unmistakable."

He nodded.

"Fair enough. And yes, occasionally, I have to be with Shawn. Now, about your first case-"

She held up a hand just as he put on his reading glasses, opening a manilla folder at the very top of the stack on his desk.

"If you don't mind, could I hold the entire stack, please?"

Shrugging, he obliged, closing the one in his hand and scooping up the mass of files before handing them to her as she stood by the desk. She bent slightly and accepted them, glancing around her with a small frown.

"Is...there a bench available somewhere?"

Henry's expression was quizzical, but he pointed just behind her and she murmured her thanks, turning on her heel and placing the files in a neat line across the flat wooden surface. Taking a deep breath, she pressed her fingertips to the first one. Her eyelashes fluttered as her new boss rose to stand behind her, looking on with no small amount of skepticism.

"Missing persons. Young woman, red hair, brown eyes, waitress, missing for two weeks, reported by her brother."

Henry crossed his arms with a small smile.

"And didn't even open the file."

Felicity ignored him for the moment, focusing on the flashes of beige painted tin and the nauseating smell of tar, mixed with salt. Then she opened the folder, seeing the gently smiling face of a truly sweet-looking girl. The name printed in neat blocks just beneath the picture read Ashley Thompson. As Felicity gazed down at the woman who couldn't have been much older than herself, there was a flash blue plastic and heat, followed by a painful tightness around her neck. Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to her throat.

"Warehouse down at the wharf. Look for some blue industrial barrels...she'll be in one," she said huskily, tossing up barriers like mad in her mind to keep the connection from overwhelming her emotionally.

Henry nodded, calling over a uniformed officer, McNabb or something like that.

"And Henry?"

"Yeah?"

She turned to look at him, unable to keep the sad tinge from reaching her voice.

"She was two months pregnant."

He gave her a really hard look this time and she nodded to him.

"It's alright, I'd be insulted if you didn't have the coroner check it out first."

One by one, she went through the files, relating what she saw when Henry was nearby, writing it down on a legal pad when he wasn't. The entire morning went by like this, officers scurrying around the bullpen as he fired off orders and sorted through the reports that were coming in. Felicity chided herself as she worked. How could she have accepted this position? It was only going to give her nightmares for the rest of her natural born days. Kids, pregnant women, fathers, old ladies...the list of the innocent was almost too much. And all of them had something to tell her...something she very likely wouldn't be able to do much about.

Oh, she could point the way to their killer, or killers, give their families a sense of closure. But what about the dad that had wanted to teach his toddler son to play football one day? The grandmother who never got around to writing her memoirs because her purse was tempting to a desperate teen who pushed her into oncoming traffic? What of the baby girl who would never be born because her dad was too high to realize the butcher knife in his hand and the blood cascading down his wife's abdomen?

There wasn't anything she could do to fulfill the dreams they had left undone, was there? And yet those unsatisfied desires would linger within her mind long after the cases were put to bed.

She almost jumped clear out of her skin when Henry touched her carefully on the shoulder.

"C'mon, kid, take a break. You gotta eat sometime."

She glanced down at the open file in her hand, her tone hesitant and somewhat distant.

"Yeah, I reckon."

He blinked in confusion.

"You reckon?" The way he repeated the word, as if it tasted strange, made Felicity laughed tiredly.

"It's a word, I swear. Come down to my grandpa's farm, you'll hear it with some frequency."

He held up his hands before grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair.

"I'll take your word for it. I'll buy you lunch."

She gave him her trademark crooked smile.

"Actually, if I could just have an apple and some kind of fruit juice, that's do me more good than anything else."

He squinted at her for a minute, then shrugged, his hand going into his pocket for his keys.

"Eh, well, I can do that, there's some vendors down the street."

She pointed over her shoulder, setting down the file with her other hand.

"But there's fruit right here," she said with a frown, indicating the bowl on the snack counter.

He took her gently by the elbow.

"Trust me, you don't want anything they put over there unless it's coffee or chocolate. And you need the air, so let's go."

He was true to his word. They found a corner stall and Henry bought a small bag of brightly colored fruit. Then they stopped at another stand literally coated with the scent of grease and meat. He purchased a big, styrofoam plate filled with glistening dries and a thickly built burger.

Felicity made a wince, but sighed appreciatively as she bit into a large red apple, a bottle of orange juice in hand as they walked back to the station. When she looked over at him, he was watching her with a glimmer of amusement. She chewed and swallowed quickly, sensing his silent question.

"I don't rightly know why, but any time I make connections for an extended period of time, I get tired and eating an apple just after always makes me feel better, more energized," she explained.

Henry watched her closely for a minute as they walked into the precinct and moved back to his desk, a cheeseburger plate and soda in his hands. He sat down and Felicity pulled a swivel chair from a nearby desk so that she could sit across from him. His brows rose, but he said nothing about it. Instead, he opened his plate and inspected his burger.

"Is that what you call it? Making connections?"

Felicity nodded, taking another bite from her apple, relishing the cold, sweetly tart crunch on her tongue.

"Mmm-hmm. It's the only way I can explain it, I guess."

He glanced up at her as he started in on his lunch.

"Like a telephone line?"

"Something like that, yeah. But it's kind of one-sided. I get information, but I can't send it back."

Henry picked up a fry, but not before nearly drowning it in ketchup, which led to her making a disgusted face.

"What, don't like ketchup?"

"In moderate, sane doses, yes, but to drown the poor bastard just so you don't taste the salt and thus ignore the fact that it's just going to make your cholesterol level keep skyrocketing? Plain disgusting."

The fry paused before it got to his mouth, his expression making Felicity bite her lip to keep her chuckle from escaping. Instead, she tapped her elbow where he had guided her out of the station earlier.

"Clairvoyant, Henry. I can always get something if I come in contact with you."

"So you have to touch?" he inquired with a thoughtful stare.

She nodded.

"Yeah, but, as you've seen, not always a person. I can touch anything, for the most part, and make some kind of connection."

Henry started to reply, but a loud snort from behind interrupted him. They both turned to see Santa Barbara's head detective sitting at his desk with a mocking smile.

"Spencer, you're seriously going to swallow that?"

Felicity felt a vicious snark rise up in her throat like bile, but Henry cut her off at the pass.

"After the leads she's given today, Lassiter, yes, I believe that I can give her a little bit of credit."

"What leads? To Guster's tap dancing class, I hope," he added with a derisive laugh, "she could use someone to tell her how to watch where her feet are going."

She was moving before she could process the motion, apple tossed away, forgotten, and striding across to his desk. She slammed her palms down so hard on the surface that the tingle went clear up her forearms. Her accent had thickened, the lilting quality of her becoming an odd, clipped drawl.

"Alright, Detective, I get that I made an incredibly bad impression yesterday and that your socially crippling sense of paranoia has placed me firmly at the top of your shit list, at least until Shawn shows up. I can even live with the rattlesnake's bite sarcasm, mostly due to constant exposure from another source and because I was, in fact, very clumsy yesterday. But what I will not put up with is attacks on my character. If you want to have it out, I'm all for it, but trust me when I tell you that I'm going to mince words about as much as you do."

She could feel flashes of strong emotions as he braced his hands on his desk so that he could be eye level with her. The scent of gunpowder flooded her nostrils even as she sensed anger, which was directed at pretty much everything, including her, distrust, a tiny admittance that she had guts to go toe to toe with him at the back of his mind, and a spark of something else that was so fast she couldn't tell anything about it.

The energy was back, however, a puff of wind that tickled at the edge's of her mind, whispered in silken threads across her vision. The taste of cinnamon was a warm tingle on her tongue, far more pleasant than the murderous expression on Lassiter's face.

"Sawyer," he bit out, "I promise you, you two-bit fortune telling harpy, that you don't want to tangle with me."

Lassiter's voice was low and husky. Her eyes narrowed.

"And I can promise you, you tin-starred John Wayne wannabe, that if you try to intimidate me again, I'll hex those Clark Gable ears of yours into something not even Dumbo could fly with."

She couldn't actually perform a hex, but why let him know that?

Something flickered in the pale blue depths of his eyes, another quick flash of that odd emotion she couldn't put her finger on. But then he jerked back, his spine straight as he snatched his jacket off the back of his chair and stomped away. Felicity let out the breath she'd been holding, pushing off the desk and turning to see Henry staring at her. She sighed and slumped into the chair she'd vacated, propping her elbow on his desk as her hand rubbed against her forehead.

"I apologize, Henry, that wasn't very professional of me."

He snorted, finishing the last fry with a quick bite.

"Please, Felicity, he had it coming and believe me, it's anything but professional around here."

That made her lips twitch and she glanced up at him through her fingers.

"From what I gather about Shawn, I can certainly see that."

As soon as the words left her mouth, a blur of blue skidded past her, the sound of his shoes squeaking on the floor loud enough to make her skin crawl.

"Dad, Dad! I've got a really quick favor to ask and-"

That's when hazel eyes fixed on her and Felicity met their assessing gaze with some amusement. She rose again and offered her hand.

"Shawn Spencer, I presume. I'm Felicity Sawyer."

He took her hand with a charismatic smile. His fingers were warm and she was immediately accosted with powerful emotions, many of them positive, aside from an almost overwhelming sense of narcissism. She could deal with that, though, as she felt his heart was a good one. Memories flashed, many of them childhood lessons with the man to her left. A smaller boy ran through her mind, intelligent and loyal to a fault. Their bond was thicker than blood and it reminded her of Mac so strongly that she had a sudden urge to just go home and hug her best friend tightly.

"Felicity, it is a pleasure," a smooth voice replied just to her right and she turned towards the handsome young man that she knew was the same boy that she'd just seen.

"Felicity, this is my assistant, Rosemary Alliewitz," Shawn interjected as Felicity shook the other man's hand.

"That is not my name, Shawn," he hissed to his friend before turning back to her with a smile that was actually far more charming than what Shawn had mustered, "I'm Burton Guster, but you can call me Gus."

Self-doubt rang through her like a disconcerted bell, a plague of fears and phobias that ranged from severe to just silly. Despite that, it was like shaking hands with the world's biggest teddy bear, one that desperately hoped to find the one thing that his friend always seemed to have and let slip through his fingers.

"Hello, Gus," she greeted him with a warm smile, letting go of his hand gently.

"Shawn, Felicity is our new psychic consultant. She'll be working with us from now on," Henry explained , standing with his hands in his pockets and a knowing smirk on his face.

Before Shawn could even respond to that, Lassiter's voice boomed across the station.

"Spencer! We got a body, let's go!"

Henry twisted his upper body around, raising his voice to be heard over the steady murmur of policemen and typing keys.

"Lassiter, take Felicity with you!"

You could have heard a water droplet hit the tile floor. Then the sharp clap of hard soled shoes was echoing as Lassiter bulled through the desks, blue eyes sparking with the angry intensity of a downed power line, right up until he stood nearly nose to nose with Henry.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Henry's expression never changed, though he rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms over his barrel chest.

"Do I look like I'm joking? Or should I run it by the Chief?"

Lassiter's lips twitched in an obvious attempt to keep back a snarl.

"Fine," he snapped, before pointing in Felicity's direction, pinning her with a glare that was actually quite similar to the one he'd worn yesterday, "but you and Spencer stay the hell out of my way on this one. Do you read me?"

Felicity grabbed her jacket from off her chair, swinging it over her shoulder and walking purposefully towards the front exit, dark ringlets bouncing against her back. She could feel the gazes on her stride and allowed herself the smirk.

"Like a damned comic book, Detective."