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.

In honour of the officers of the NYPD who served and protected their last on 9-11-01

A/N Sorry about the delay, I dislocated two knuckles and haven't been able to type well (or type at all)

Chapter Eleven

"Pez…PEZ!"

"Huh?!" Sara started, having dazed off into another one of her, seemingly random, brown studies.

"Earth to Pezzini, come in Pez. Where the hell did you go?" Danny asked, concerned.

She hurried to reassure him, not wanting him to think she was flashing back again. "I'm fine Danny, really, my mind's just wandering."

After the little incident with Jake and the shattering glass, Danny had been treating her with kid gloves, it was nice that he cared, but the constant watching got a little annoying after a while. Especially since her mind was wandering considerably since last week.

Gabriel kissed her. Her mind hadn't quite wrapped itself around that concept yet, although they'd spent a considerable amount of time in that position. Her mind was wandering now because she kept remembering his touch at the strangest moments. Like while they were trying to hack into the psycho psychic's computer.   Though she supposed that when she though of computers she thought of Gabriel and lately when she thought of Gabriel her mind went straight to the gutter.

Not that it was a bad thing. Just not at work.

"You know we're not going to get anything from this." The technician, a mousy looking kind of guy, pushed back from his chair. "She cleaned this out good."

"C'mon," Pez cajoled, "You can never really erase a hard drive, there's got to be something."

"Nope, sorry Detective, there's nothing I can do." He linked his hands behind his hair and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where the glasses touched. 

"Crap!" she swore, and put her hands on her hips, pacing back and forth trying to figure something out.

Gabriel told her once, while they were talking, that unless the hardware was actually removed and destroyed, that there was still information on the disc. It was up to the skill level of the "programmer", or hacker, to find the information. He once bragged that he'd bought his first computer used, from his father's business, and hacked into his Dad's mainframe using the 'deleted' network connections. That was a quality erasure too, not a cheap procedure. 

Frustrated she shoved a thumb under her gun belt, slicing her finger open on the case for her cell phone. Swearing, she stuck the offending extremity into her mouth, trying to staunch the bleeding.

 Cell phone. Phone call. Modem. Computer. Gabriel. She could call him in here. He could get something off this damn uncooperative lump of plastic and sand. She could also see him again before the end of her shift, a not so incidental benefit of calling him in to the office.  That decided it. She whipped out her cell and hit #-6-7, her speed dial code for Gabriel.

 "Talismaniacs, Gabriel Bowman" his voice was the impersonal, businesslike tone used around the world.

"Hey" she said softly.

"Sara!" he exclaimed, sounding very pleasantly surprised, "What's wrong?"

"I got a computer problem," she clarified, "I need a hacker."

"Uh…is this like, personal or business?" he asked.

"Business," she reassured him, though it touched her that he'd hack for her on a personal level as well as a professional one.

"Cool," he sounded intrigued, "What's up?"

"I got a computer and no person. I need to find the person and I got no hard drive. Our techie can't anything off of if, but…"

"Hey," the 'techie' protested, "The damn thing's deleted!"

She ignored him and blithely continued, "I need a nerd. Can you do it?"

"He said it's deleted right, not destroyed?" Gabriel asked.

"Yeah," she chanced a glace at the now-fuming techie, and read off the make and model. "It's a Dell, desktop, um…4400. Lots of memory cards, primitive graphics, no speakers, I think…yeah, that's it."

"Ok, be there in a few." He paused, "Missed you."

"Yeah me too," she said softly, slightly embarrassed, not at the admission, but at making the admission in mixed company.

"Bowman?" asked Danny after she hung up. God did he know her. Too well sometimes.

"Gabriel, yeah, he said he can do it," She didn't meet Danny's eyes, but she knew damn well that he knew that there was more than 'business' between them.

"Well I wish this 'Bowman' fellow luck," spat the techie, "There's nothing here." He packed up his beat up soft-briefcase and stalked out of their office, where the computer had been set up, in a huff.

"That was smooth," Danny commented, "Pissed him off good"

"We need the information," Sara slumped in her seat and out her boots up on the desk, "He can't get it to us."

"Yeah, I bet that's it," Danny teased, "Or do you just want to show off your 'nerd'?"

Her boots slipped off the desktop, slamming into the floor, "Hey now Danny, I don't want to hear it, OK?"

"So you are," he observed, sliding up his chair next to her desk. "Tell"

"No," she sat up and crossed to the furthest point of the room possible, "No damn way."

"C'mon," Danny protested, "You always tell. Besides it's been too long since you've had 'a man', though Gabriel, y'know, sounds kinda like cradle robbing to me." He teased.

"You're dead," she pointed her finger at him, "dead. D-E-A-D"

"Right," Danny rolled away on his chair, smiling. Just then, Jake walked in, carrying a folder with a few pages in it.

"Hey Pez," he hailed, "Vicky got a post-mortem on the floater, she said it's important."

"Thank you, Jake," Sara smiled sweetly, glaring at Danny as she walked by.

She followed Jake to the examiner's room, as far from anyone with a working nasal system as possible. It got kind of whiffy near there, especially in the summer. 

"Hey," greeted Vicky, "About time I saw you, where the hell you been?"

"Busy," Sara replied, wincing internally as she remembered her missed meetings with Vicky because of Gabriel's 'distractions'.

"Well not with this one," she unzipped the body bag, letting eau de corpse waft through the room.

Jake, the rookie, winced and wrinkled his nose. He fetched a mask, coated with Vicks Vapo Rub to try and kill the stench. Vicky was a coroner; she was inured to all but the worst smells. Sara was too, but for a different reason entirely. Burnt was much more potent than soggy, especially over a long period of time. After working on the Site Sara could breathe just about anything, concrete dust, paper particles, ash, and yes, the odor of a lot of bodies.

"Open and shut, at least from a coroner's perspective. Wet drowning. Lungs filled with water and respiration stops due to anoxia. Do I get a prize?" Vicky pushed the bag far enough back so they could see that it was indeed open and shut.

"I'm free Friday night" Jake offered, an option Vicky wrinkled her nose at.

"I'd rather go with him," she motioned to the truly nasty looking body on the slab.

"Ouch, McCarty, bad, bad, bad. Don't you know better than to hit on the live ones? I'm sure Vicky could set you up with a suitable cadaver." Sara exaggeratedly winced and winked at Vicky.    

  "Cute" Jake glared at Sara. She knew damn well he was trying to fish for a date with Vicky. "Anything else?"

"Your computer friend is here, he's trying to find the doorknob."

"Oh, Gabriel," Sara absently pushed open the door. It opened backwards from most doors, the maintenance people put it on wrong. Unless you'd been there before you'd never know.

"Oh God!" he exclaimed after walking in and bee-lined back out, dropping to his knees at Vicky's desk.

"Gabriel!" Sara exclaimed, rushing after him.

"Oh God," he moaned again, retching into the trashcan, "How the hell can you stand that?"

"What?" she asked.

"That smell, the…" he paused to drop his head back into the trashcan, "uhgggh…the body."

"Oh," she realized, sniffing a bit and smelling the cadaver, it wasn't that bad, she'd had much worse in her career. "Sorry, I didn't even think of that."

"Yeah, well," he breathed, "It's kinda strong."

"It's not that bad," she sniffed again, "Burnt is worse."

"Oh..." he retched again.

"Sorry," she stroked his hair, holding it out of the way. "I didn't mean to set it off again."

"That's Ok," he breathed, "I'll get used to it in a minute."

The thought suddenly occurred to her that she didn't really want Gabriel to become inured to the smell of death the way she was.

 On nights when her own conscience, not the Witchblade, kept her awake she wondered sometimes if her very spirit was becoming harder because of the things she was forced to and sometimes chose to do. Gabriel was one of the few things in her life that was precious to her that didn't involve pain and death; even then he sometimes got in the way of it.

"That alright, we'll get out of here," she looked up to Vicky and Jake, who'd come out of the examination room, "You can fill me in later."

Vicky nodded, with the innate sense of female understanding. She knew now what had kept Sara from their meetings. She wasn't necessarily happy at playing second fiddle at the moment, but was willing to let that pass for the time being.

"You Ok, man?" asked Jake, the subtleties of the situation passing right over his head.

"Yeah," Gabriel straightened up, "Just wasn't expecting it, that's all." 

"That's Ok" she smiled, "Let's get out of here"

They walked out, into the little hallway right outside Vicky's place, Gabriel turned and shamefacedly tried to apologize.

"Sara" he stumbled, "I'm sorry I…well, I know I kinda embarrassed you in front of your friends. I.."

"Gabriel," she cut him off, gently taking his face into his hands. "Don't. Please. Do you have any idea how many people I know who aren't inured to the smell of a dead body?" he shook his head, "You. Just you. Hell, I'm so used to it sometimes it won't even surprise me any more. It's just there."

"You're a homicide cop" he protested, "That's your job." Her hands, which had been cupping his chin, slowly fell to his chest as he saw the play of emotions across her face. "What?"

"I tired, Gabriel," she rested her head on his shoulder and automatically his arms fit around her waist. "I'm so damn tired. All those bodies and murders and…it."

She suddenly pushed him away fiercely, "When the hell is this going to stop?" she demanded, "When can I go to sleep and not hear people dying in my dreams? When will this" she raided her right wrist, the Witchblade flaring with pent up emotion, "finally get it's own damn way and kill me? Why the hell is this happening to me???"  

"Because you're you," he answered simply, pulling her back into a tight embrace, "And for some reason God chose to put you here, now, and for a reason he saw fit. He made you a cop and he gave you the Witchblade so that you could make a difference in the world. You won't let evil pass by you, you'll confront it." He swallowed hard, "and maybe you will die. But you'll die fighting and that's all anyone can ask of you."

She sighed, letting herself rest against him in a rare moment of simple acceptance. "Die fighting, huh?   

"Yep," he agreed "but not yet, not while you can still kick some ass."

That statement got the requisite grin, "Yeah," she squeezed him, "Yeah,"

"C'mon" he cajoled, "Let's go bust your psycho"

"Cool"