Extended Disclaimer: Yay for Grey's Anatomy, as created by Shonda Rhimes, because "dark and twisty" is an amusing description of Meredith, and so I am stealing it for this story.
A/N: At first I held off on updating because this chapter was only half the length of the preceding one. Wouldn't you know it, another sleepless night and I end up with the longest one yet! So I split it into two parts, just to keep the fun going a little longer.
Hope you're continuing to have as much fun as I am. Reviews still make me extra-happy!
Chapter
3: Flying Sparks
The first anniversary of my death passed without incident. Or, actually, recognition of any sort, which doesn't really match up with H's antics of the year before, so…clearly, all he learned over his summer vacation (which once again lacked any appointments with psychologists) was how to completely bottle up all his emotions. Tsk, tsk. Don't you know that's how most famous axe murderers start out?
On the other hand, he does manage to kill at least a dozen people per year. Someone should probably explore the correlation at some point. Okay, back my roundup of last year's split-continent angst:
In North America, Horatio was pretty much having the best year of his life. That was not sarcasm! Okay, it was, but it was to advance the story! Could I have a pass, please? Just once? Thank you.
First, he was green-lit by "the most dangerous gang in Miami," who apparently sprang up overnight since I never heard of them. I'd make cracks about how the most dangerous gang can't hit the most conspicuous target, except as previously mentioned I now know that Horatio has a small army of angels devoted solely to protecting his life.
Next, after a few weeks of faithfully chanting "Yelina is safe, she's with her family, and she's happy," 20 times a day to himself, he declared the torch temporarily extinguished and got involved with another states attorney. Unlike snippy Rebecca, Rachel Turner was actually quite pleasant, but she promptly met her maker (and me, but that's an unrelated topic) at the hands of another of his arch enemies - one he was able to punch without getting in trouble - and since H was the last one to see her alive, he officially became the prime suspect. I don't understand how anyone would have been suspicious of him for a minute, since he's chivalrous almost to the point of chauvinism when it comes to women, but it still earned him a few hours in a holding cell, courtesy of Stetler.
In retrospect, I don't think Walter Resden's a very smart man. If he really wanted to hurt Horatio, he would have tracked down the remaining members of his family, not a woman he'd been seeing for a grand total of three weeks. And if he really wanted to get Horatio thrown in jail, he would have killed Stetler. Think about it. If it were Stetler lying in a pool of blood, there'd be at least a dozen witnesses attesting to his several prior murderous threats, and even I might have had to think twice before jumping to his defense.
They eventually cleared him, of course, but the murderer strolled off without any punishment at all because the judge in charge of the case was the same one H made an enemy of the previous year. Pay attention, this scenario will look familiar later.
Fortunately, Horatio got his revenge a few months down the road, shooting him to save the life of someone else. In all seriousness, if he didn't have a badge to justify all those bullets, I think he'd be considered one of the most dangerous serial killers in the country. Even so, he spends inordinate amounts of time on one knee, praying for forgiveness. I'll let you in on a little secret…God would ease up on his guilty conscience a lot faster if he'd just kneel properly.
Other secrets require a trip out of state: specifically, my state.
For the second time in two years, a dangerous criminal killed in Miami and fled to New York to continue the murdering spree, so Horatio made another trip to go hang out with his buddy Mac. While up there, he also got slapped with an order to appear in court at some point in the distant future, regarding his involvement in a certain off-duty murder case ten years ago. I can't tell you about that yet. Still classified under priest-patron confidentiality. God's really annoyingly strict about that.
Hey, God. How's it going? I'm telling them all about what Horatio didn't say to his priest. That's right, I was just about to move on.
Just in case he didn't have enough on his plate already, the lab was struck with a mole infestation, and his spare time was spent plotting ways to have Ryan flush him or her out. They never did manage to succeed at that, while the mole merrily continued to leak information about how Delko popped positive for marijuana and Bobby was stealing office supplies. Only that first one seemed relevant enough for Stetler to come swaggering down and try to throw another member of the team in jail, though.
Once again, his best efforts were trampled upon to make him look like an idiot, which about drove him over the edge…and I have to make one teensy little digression here to clarify that Stetler checked himself into a mental hospital shortly thereafter to regain his sanity.
So, back to the gossip wall: now would be a good time to introduce you to Delko's sister, Marisol. Just to get all the facts straight, she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer and smoked marijuana to alleviate nausea. Her brother had been buying the drugs for her, but she made the mistake of trying to buy for herself…and her entire cancer support group…and got arrested, because surprisingly, possessing a copious amount of a mind-altering substance is ILLEGAL. H & crew pulled out all the stops to have the charges dropped, something achieved only by the spectacularly lucky coincidence that Marisol bought from a dealer who sold largely fake product.
As you might imagine, not everyone believes in coincidences, namely an attorney named Monica West, who became the newest name on his arch-enemies list. Just in the interest of gender equality. She threw all sorts of nasty insults and accusations, and not-so-subtle threats to send the lab's reputation crashing to the ground and his along with it.
His response was to start dating Marisol. I won't even stoop to commenting that he was probably just jealous that another family was giving his a run for its money in the dark-and-twisty department.
To kick-start what would become a relationship in warp speed, on the first date, they used her pending death-by-cancer as an excuse to - ow! JEEZ GOD. What? No, I was not aware that "jeez" is derived from Jesus and that it is using Your name in vain. I apologize, it won't happen again. Yes, I promise I will keep my commentary less colorful in the future, just let me keep...
Yeah, okay, be back shortly.
