Disclaimer:
I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, I intend no monetary gain off of this, and don't wish any kind of copyright infringement on Top Cow production or TNT or whomever.
A/N: This probably deserves a higher rating than PG-13 for some graphic descriptions and swearing. Be warned.
In honour of the officers of the NYPD who served and protected their last on 9-11-01
Chapter Nine
"Please?" Sara begged.
"Do you have any idea how compromised my medical reputation would be if I wrote that you were fit for duty? I'd get laughed out of the board." Leigh put her hands on her hips, firmly denying the determined Detective.
"I'm fine, honestly!" Sara protested. "And I'm going nuts from the paperwork."
"Then go nuts!" Leigh threw up her hands, "If it's not one thing then it's the other. I swear if everyone was as eager to work as you and Danny, the world would be a much better place."
"Leigh!" Sara whined, "Please?"
"NO!" she shouted, "Absolutely not. You just had major orthopaedic surgery, not only am I not an orthopaedic surgeon I'm not going to declare you fit!"
"But I'm fine, really, look," Sara, in the privacy of the living room, pulled off her jacket and black cable knit sweater.
"Oh my God!" Leigh breathed, far from exaggerating her health, Sara was correct. The bruising had faded to almost nothing, the incision wounds had healed completely, and the muscles and ligaments looked to be in the right places. "You… you're…that's not possible!!"
"Can I go back to fieldwork? Please?"
Leigh sat down on the sofa with a thump as her knees gave way to shock. Sara stood in front of her, wearing her sleeveless undershirt.
"Just one little note, 'Sara Pezzini is medically fit for duty', that's all."
"Sara Pezzini is going to sit her butt down and explain herself. I know for a fact that you completely disjointed your shoulder, tore off the entire rotator cuff, and broke at least three bones, including your collarbone. There is no way in heaven you could heal this quickly. It's not possible. Not physically possible." Leigh looked as white as a sheet.
'Oops' Sara thought, not realising the extent of the damage, and therefore the miracle of the healing.
"You had major surgery a week and a half ago. At the very most, you might be able to move it, a little, without pain." Leigh went wide eyed, "Sara what's going on?"
'Uh oh' Sara's mind sped, she knew a blasé 'I got good bones' would not fly past Leigh. If left unsatisfied, she'd go to Danny and he'd really start in on Pez.
"Sara?"
"Look, Leigh, there's a lot of…impossible stuff going on right now. I can't explain. It's just…strange, Ok? I'm fit for duty, I promise you." Sara pleaded with her eyes, "Please? Have I ever lied to you?"
Leigh shook her head, still in a state of disbelief, she'd known Pez forever, Danny had been Pez's partner long before he was her husband. The woman was hard edged, gruff, and blunt, but if there was one thing she could count on it was her honesty.
She moved her hand, motioning Sara to bend down, and Leigh ran her hands along Sara's left shoulder. She had a boxer's body, heavily muscled torso and arms, with strong, sturdy legs. The muscles should of at least atrophied from being confined, unmoving, to a cast, but they were as lean and hard as they'd ever been.
"I guess this one I won't be writing up for the New England Journal of Medicine" Leigh said shakily, "They wouldn't believe me anyhow."
"Thanks" Sara popped back up, "I appreciate it."
"Don't mention it," Leigh responded, "Please."
She watched as Sara pulled the sweater back over her head. Sara wasn't graceful, not like Mija, who had a budding Broadway career, or like Danny, whose muscles were loose from endless Kung Fu training, but there was a certain economy of movement, a brusque efficiency, which was as forthright and honest as the woman herself. She didn't try to fake what she didn't have, nor did she waste any energy when she didn't have to.
"I'm going to give you a prescription, two of them actually, one for the pain" she glared at Sara before the other could protest that she didn't need it, "and one to clean out any infection that's left."
"Ok," Sara agreed, but Leigh had a feeling that she would have agreed to anything as long as she got the note.
"Be careful, Sara," Leigh, said, worried, not just because they were friends, but because she knew Danny, and he wouldn't be fit to live with if she got herself injured again.
He'd damn near had a breakdown when it appeared as though she'd not made it through the Day. If she'd had a little less confidence in Danny, or a little less trust of Sara, she'd have suspected that there was something more than 'just partners' going on between them. He'd been distraught. Until he'd frantically caught her working with a group of fire-fighters, then the whole Woo family, right down to the little one, breathed a sigh of relief.
Leigh admired Sara, a lot of women in her position would be resentful of the 'other woman' in Danny's life. It would be natural. Sara never took advantage, though, she never tried to insinuate herself where she didn't feel she belonged. She didn't try to 'mother' the kids; she didn't get involved in the daily squabbles over whose turn it was to cook. They weren't friends in the pedicure-and-chick-flick sense, but there was a mutual respect. She helped a bunch with 'Managing Mija' giving the teenager an outlet that Leigh was positively sure wouldn't lead her astray.
It was like having a sister right her own little backyard.
For her own part, Sara was giddy with finally getting permission for fieldwork, instead of the grunt labour that Dante had been gleefully dumping on her. There was one thing she knew Danny had been putting off until she could be there.
Dante wasn't pleased at her return to active status, he scowled and blustered over the Doctor's note, she wouldn't have put it past him to figure out it was Danny's wife who signed out on her fitness. She could see the smoke coming out of Dante's ears as the little hamster wore the exercise wheel down to a nub thinking of some semi-legitimate excuse to hold her back from real duty.
Not that there was one, anyhow.
They'd got a search warrant for Dominique's Den, Sara had the keys, and they needed to locate her, preferably now. Dante shouted that loudly enough that the entire precinct was cracking out the cotton balls and updating the office pool of 'how-long-till-one-of-them-cracks-and-kills-the-other'.
"NYPD homicide," Sara banged on the door, to the psychic's office, not really expecting anyone to answer, but feeling the need to pound on something. "We have a Warrant. Open up," she banged loudly again, then put the keys in the lock and opened the door.
"Whew," Jake wrinkled his nose, "Remind me not to buy incense. What did she buy it by, the gallon?"
"Damn," Sara coughed; she must have left it burning while they'd been out. "Eucalyptus, ugh"
"Alright people, let's get busy." Jake commanded, they'd been allowed one extra uniformed officer and a crime scene investigator to handle this one.
Slowly they picked through the underground 'office'. They found a lot of Tarot cards, different 'hidden' caches of matches, coloured lights, a hidden set of speakers, and several 'ghostly apparitions'. There were financial records, several cabinets of 'client' files, and a large wardrobe.
"Tag the computer and the cabinets," Sara ordered, "Two to one that where's she's gone is in there somewhere."
"Hey, Pez, look," Jake slid his hands over a crack in the plaster of the back room, the one with the files, "I think it's hollow."
She thought for a second, about the floor plans for the grocery above stairs, mentally calculating the square footage. "According to the architect, there's room for about another three to five feet of space."
"Hey Bill," Jake called, "C'mere. There's a room somewhere back here, can you get a mallet or something and bust through?"
"Sure boss," Bill the crime scene analyst shrugged and fetched a large sledgehammer from his van. The plaster lasted about two seconds before caving in on itself.
"Holy Mother of God," Pez swore.
The back of the back room was covered in arcane writings, weird symbols, there was an altar, set into the wall, covered in crushed velvet and, was that a human skull? There were candles, black, red, purple, some half burnt and others with symbols carved into the shafts. There were icons, idols, and even, Sara picked off some plaster, a voodoo doll. Of her, to be precise, complete with red cashmere sweater, black leather jacket, hair, badge, jeans, and Witchblade.
"Uh, Pez," Jake said shakily, "What's going on here?"
"It's a set-up" she hissed, "It was a fucking set-up!"
"What was," asked Jake, puzzled.
"This," Sara shouted, flinging her arms open, "She didn't spot Gallo on the damn yacht, she said that to make me interested. He didn't order her to shoot that guy, she did it herself, to get me here. She wanted me to be here, but…she didn't think we'd arrest her. Not yet. She thought she'd have enough time. Damn!"
"No offence, Pez, but what would she want you for? You're just a cop."
She waved off his comment; she knew damn well why someone would want to try and control her. "We need to find her. Now. Before she's got time to build another one of these…things."
"Let's get to work," Jake agreed, they carried out box after box of confiscated stuff, cabinets, computers, papers, anything that they thought they might conceivably need. They put it in the CSI van; Bill would drive it back to the lab and get everything tested out.
They were almost done when a pinging sound glanced off of one of the lamp-posts near Sara's head.
"Duck!" she shouted, as the pinging got louder. Someone was taking pot-shots at the partners with a silenced rifle. As Sara cowered down under the van, she was willing to bet her badge that the gun that was shooting at her now was identical to the one that had offed Dantoni.
The windshield on the van shattered. The spray of broken glass snapped something inside her head. She could feel her body, tensing up and curling into a fetal position. Then the memory assuaged her.
"Pezzini, homicide, where do you need me?" she'd asked the fire chief on site.
He'd motioned with a jerk of his head.
"Casualties! Get them outta heah! Clear up this traffic shit. We need to get men up there. You do that Pezzini?" he looked up at the building.
As the flames poured out of the building, they could hear the whole thing groaning like a sick puppy. Things flew down shattering like glass along the pavement. Smoking debris, steel beams, glass, everything made that same shattering sound.
Unless they were people. Humans made an entirely different sound when impacting concrete at the terminal velocity of 125 m.p.h. It sounded like a splitting watermelon. Every few minutes, the people in the parking lot had to dodge the squelching impacts.
"C'mon people. MOVE! Get you butts in gear. Let's go!" she shouted, helping a bunch of fire-fighters cart wounded to the emergency triage set up in the parking lot. She created an 'in' station and an 'out' station, one for the living and one for the not-so-living.
Something shattered; they ducked as a rain of hot glass spread over the lot. Sara pitched her body over the prone form of a middle-aged man, bleeding from a concussion and missing a limb. There were dozens, if not a hundred people there, all in various states of injury.
The ambulances were screaming into the lot to load people and get them out. Sara grabbed a day-glow orange vest and made like a traffic cop, shouting instead of using a whistle.
"Oh Shit," she looked up just as the South tower finally gave up its valiant effort to remain upright. Everything blasted outwards, the fire-trucks the ambulances, the people, the steel, everything just shattered.
It seemed as if it was moving in slow motion, thanks to the Witchblade, she ducked behind an ambulance as the waves of concussion and debris impacted her body.
She woke up an interminable amount of time later, having punched through the wall of the ambulance and taken shelter inside. The people, the EMT's and the patient, weren't as lucky as she. Numbly she registered that she was buried, alive.
The Witchcblade screamed in defiance, lighting up the dim interior of the buried rubble. No way in this world would ol'Witchy let herself get caught with her pants down, no sir, not the Witchblade. Sara sliced through burning steel, crushed concrete and other things she didn't stop to examine, finally standing on the top of a small mound of rubbish that had banked around the prone ambulance.
"Shit," she was shouting, "Shit, shit, shit!"
There was nothing left of the South Twin Tower.
"Pez! Pez! Pez! Are you hit? Pez! ARE YOU HIT?" Jake was shouting, shaking her, trying to get a reaction out of his partner. He had a weapon drawn, absently she wondered why, but then reality came flooding back to her.
"No!" She moved out of her half hidden position, under the van, still shaking like a leaf, "No I'm fine."
"Jesus Christ, Pez, don't do that to me!" before she could protest he pulled her into a firm hug, squeezing her so hard her ribs protested, "Scared the bejesus out of me."
"What happened?" she asked, still kind of confused from the flashback.
"Some asshole took a few pot-shots at us, that's all," Jake sounded breathless, "Are you sure you're ok? You spaced out there for a while."
"Yeah," she shook her head, trying to clear out the old memory, "Just a… little flashback. I think it was the glass."
"Flashback?" he sounded puzzled, but then it dawned on him, exactly to what she was flashing back. "Oh"
"Yeah, oh" Sara sat on the running board of the van, knees still weak from the impact, "Gimme a minute"
"OK," he agreed, helping Bill finish loading the van. Larry, the plainclothes officer puffed up, he'd gone to try and catch the pot-shooter. It hadn't worked. What seemed like seconds flew by, and Jake was shaking her arm to tell her it was time to go.
Numbly she followed him to the precinct.
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