1 "He Knew What Was Right And Wrong."
Chapter 7, I believe? I can't believe how much fun I'm having writing these installments. Thanks you guys for the reviews. Keep sending them! By the way, if anyone knows what the phrase "AU" means, please email me, or tell me in your review. Thanks.
This chapter deals with Danny coming closer and closer to spilling the truth to Flack. Will he do it today? Contains a song I wrote myself during typing this, called "Sideways."
Danny was back at the lab, testing some handcuffs for DNA. The guy they had found was handcuffed to a bed post and evidently beaten to death. The markings weren't pretty. And neither was Danny Messer, after twelve hours on the job.
"Hey, Danny. What are you still doing here?"
Flack walked in. "I could say the same for you," he answered.
"Checking out some new evidence in a case I'm working on. None of your business, of course."
"No, never." Danny kept his blue eyes trained on the microscope, yet his mind was full of something so much more different than the job. Thoughts swarmed around his brain. Tell. Don't tell. Confront Arielle. Just shut up about it, it ain't your business. Tell-
"Flack?"
He turned, about to leave. "Yeah?"
"I... I gotta tell you something."
Once upon a time I knew myself
I couldn't wait for someone to clarify
But then as the city fused into my mind
I became a distant cousin of mine
Someone you didn't want to find
Because she never knew you...
"Arielle?"
"Yeah, Don?"
"I need to talk to you."
Blue eyes met brown, each pair locked onto the other. The brown pair cowered at the blue's expression, and the owner said, "Okay, what's up?"
"It has to do with you... ten years ago."
"When I was fourteen?"
Once in a lifetime I could settle in
Become a voice I was familiar with
After this I can't concentrate
It's as if gravity came too late
Because I stayed suspended for a while
Too high and lost to figure it out...
"Yeah." Another pair of blue joined the line. "I'm sorry I had to bring this up, but..."
"We know... that you were... hurt... when you were fourteen years old."
The brown pair of eyes widened, almost in panic. "No. You've got to be mistaken-"
"It's okay, it's not your fault-"
Her voice was shaking. "I don't know what you're talking about-"
"It was written in your diary."
She paused. "What?"
Danny sighed and started over. "When you got drunk, and I took you home... I happened across your old diary when you were a teenager-"
"And you had to snoop?"
"I wasn't looking for anything, I was just-"
"You had to be nosy, right?"
"So it did happen."
Silence.
Somebody came and tilted my life
Like a picture painted sideways
Somebody came and gave me new glasses
So I'm not seeing my way
I need to grab onto the tails of someone who knows what's going on
Because all I see is things gone sideways
"I-"
"Arielle. It's written down. He hurt you. Your stepfather, Mike? We know he... he raped you."
"He was drugged." Her voice carried the salty edge of tears. "He didn't know what he was doing..."
"He knew. He knew what was right and wrong. He twisted your knowledge to make you think you were wrong. It gave him power."
"It was my fault-"
"Don't say that, Arielle! Don't ever say that!" Danny was yelling, the very attitude of a New York officer. Disgusted at a thing like rape. Tears ran, crystalline burdens of hate and fear, down her cheeks.
"Danny's right." Flack said it quietly. "You're not to blame. Ten years ago, he knew you were innocent, he knew you could be hurt, crushed easily... and he took advantage when your mother wasn't looking."
Before I was a portrait of happiness
The very essence of life poured through me
But then I became tainted by this cruel world
And now I'm knocked into a somersault of loneliness
I used to think I was okay
But now I see everything was poisoning me...
She crumpled, into Flack's arms, like a weathered statue drawn to its breaking point. He held her, silently, trying not to lose his emotional control, and walked with her outside. Danny hesitated, a single, solitary, betraying tear glistening below his eyelid, and then he followed them out.
And now I realize I'm just knocked aside
Like a picture painted sideways
Someone messed with my lease on life
Because I'm not living it my way
I need an angel to be my eyes and help me out of this hell
Because all this time I've been looking sideways...