Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. I meant to post a new chapter every week, but well, the end of the year and subsequent finals are nearing. I start them next Monday, so I've got a lot of work ahead of me. The wait depends on finding the time to edit chapters. I hope to get the next chapter out by next Monday.

Title: Visionary

By: Kara

Begun: November 22, 2004

Finished: Not yet finished (Parts 1-9 of 9 are finished. Epilogue needs to be written still…)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: After a businessman dies suddenly and unexpectedly, supposedly from committing suicide, not long after contacting Gabriel about taking an artifact, the case is handed to Sara. While Sara probes the victim's death, Jake and Danny suspect Gabriel's involvement in the crime. When Gabriel begins to exhibit some of the same symptoms the victim experienced before his death, Sara investigates, hoping to save her young friend's life before he meets the same end as his predecessor, but Nottingham's unsuspected offered aid causes her to wonder whether Irons is involved in the situation.

Chapter One – Interference

"The vic's name is Robert Torpe. 46 years old, no history of illness or disease; he lived alone in an apartment building, right up there." Jake McCarty pointed upwards to the windows of a loft about three floors up. Sara Pezzini and Danny Woo glanced up toward the window, which was closed, but visible through the window were several police officers, milling about the apartment, searching for clues as to their victim's death.

Danny knelt beside the mangled body that used to belong to Robert Torpe and squinted, as if searching for the man that used to belong to the body, then asked Jake, "The cause of death was definitely the fall then?" He and Sara had just arrived on the scene about five minutes earlier to find McCarty already there and waiting for them. Jake had been the one to make the call to them both that brought them in to their shift a little earlier than either would have liked. While Danny had been eating breakfast with his wife, Sara had been at her apartment, reading over some of the older information Gabriel had given her about the Witchblade. He'd been mentioning something lately about the prophecy that named Sara the wielder, having studied it in more detail whenever he had the free time. Sara was curious to know anything new connected to her destiny, but as of the previous evening, there was nothing new to report.

"According to the witnesses." Jake provided.

"Which ones are they?" Sara asked, scanning the crowd of bystanders.

"Take your pick," Jake said, waving his arm to take in the crowd to his left. "Torpe had been up on the top of the building for about ten minutes before he jumped. We've got a crowd of bystanders and four beat cops that arrived on the scene shortly before he jumped to his death telling us what happened."

Sara tilted her head as she glanced at the body, grimacing at the odd angle of the middle-aged man's snapped neck, obviously the cause of his immediate death, as reported by the coroner, who arrived on the scene before Jake. No one had touched the body, according to the rookie, except for the paramedics who'd arrived shortly after the fall. "One thing I don't understand is," Sara began, putting on her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the sun, "why are we here?" She looked skeptically at Jake. "All signs point to jumper. We're homicide cops, Rookie."

"She's right," Danny said, looking at Jake. "This isn't our forte. We don't usually investigate suicides, especially ones with so many witnesses."

"Well, here's the thing…" Jake began disconcertingly, "All the witnesses are saying the same thing. It looks like Torpe was talking to someone before he jumped. For the entire duration he'd been reportedly—" Jake looked at his notepad, "'mumbling to himself and looking over his shoulder frequently' and apparently looked as if he didn't want to jump."

"Is that so?" Sara asked, disinterested. She massaged her temple as she surveyed the scene. "So someone coerced him to jump, supposedly."

"Possibly forced." Jake added.

"So where is this mystery Kevorkian then?" Danny asked.

"That's the question of the day. Super was on his way up the stairs after he called the police, trying to see if he could persuade Mr. Torpe to come back down, but he got there too late. He says there was no one on the roof, and only one exit." Jake replied.

"So, this notorious suicide-assister just disappeared—somehow—after talking Robert Torpe into jumping six stories to his death?" Sara asked.

Jake shrugged. "That's the story, Pez."

"This is ridiculous." Sara shook her head. "I can't believe I was called in for this."

"I don't know, Pez." Jake continued, grabbing her arm as she turned to leave. "I think we should still look into it. After all the strange murders I've seen since I was transferred here, I'm willing to believe anything's possible now… and I think you should too."

"I know you're eager to find your big case that'll break the bank for you, Rookie, but here's my advice: Don't get pulled in too easily. Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar." Jake's face fell slightly but, not one to be easily discouraged, he brightened again almost instantaneously.

"Well, I'll still talk to some of the witnesses some more, if that's OK with you."

Sara regarded the blonde cop a moment, then said, "Tell you what: Danny and I will go upstairs, take a look around the apartment, and if we find anything then I'll look at the case more seriously."

Jake shrugged. "It's your choice… but thanks." He grinned and turned around, striding over to where the beat cops who'd responded to the scene were standing by.

Sara watched him go then turned to her partner. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." Danny followed her toward the apartment entrance. "You still think it's a suicide, don't you?" He grinned.

"I like to humor the rookies." Sara explained without turning. "It makes them eager to prove me wrong, and if they're eager, they'll work harder to solve the case. McCarty may be a doofus, but he's definitely got the ambition to be a detective."

O-O-O-O

There were a number of cops milling around the apartment, looking for clues when Sara and Danny got there, but most of them had cleared out after a few minutes. Sara looked around the living room, astonished at the number of artifacts adorning every corner of the room.

"Your friend Gabriel would have a field day here, wouldn't he?" Danny commented as he picked up some clay dish on a shelf and examined it. "He's into this kind of mythical, ancient stuff, right?"

"Well, considering he sells it for a living, yeah, I'd say he's interested in it."

"If Torpe doesn't have a will, this stuff's gonna go up for auction pretty cheap. You should tell him about it later."

"I'll certainly keep that in mind." Sara said. "I'm gonna go check out the bedroom." She walked by herself down the narrow hall where she'd seen what appeared to be Torpe's bedroom at the end. For all her talk of improving Jake's detective skills, she still wasn't willing to admit aloud that she'd been getting a weird feeling the longer she stayed at the crime scene. And ever since her acquisition of the Witchblade, Sara had been more and more apt to trust her 'weird feelings' … They usually turned out to be justified as of late. Besides, she was already at the scene. It couldn't hurt to check out the apartment of the man who had so brutally taken his own life only an hour before.

Sara ducked into the bathroom on her right to check it out before entering the bedroom. She looked at her appearance in the bathroom mirror briefly before opening up the medicine cabinet. She raised an eyebrow at the number of small yellow bottles crowding the shelves, and took an ordinary one down, glanced at the label.

"Depression medication." She said to herself, with little surprise in her voice. She examined some of the other labels to find the same medication present. In the garbage can near her foot she found several empty bottles, all with the same label. Judging by the lateness of the refill date, Torpe had been jumping ahead on his prescription. Big surprise there… she thought, returning the bottle to its place. She left the bathroom, now with the strong feeling that she'd been 100 right about the suicide diagnosis, but she walked into the bedroom nonetheless.

There was nothing particularly unique about the room. It contained a single, queen-sized bed, ordinary, plain sheets, almost-morbidly monotone furniture. If it weren't for the random artifacts placed about the room—vases and small statuettes—Sara wouldn't have been able to distinguish Torpe's apartment from a Linens and Things.

It was then that something caught her eye.

It was so ensconced that she was surprised that she'd noticed it, but she attributed it to the relative cleanliness of the rest of the room that the artifact below Torpe's bed had crept into her line of vision. Kneeling down on the floor, Sara reached out and took the item, which was wrapped in an old rag, and brought it up to her face. She cringed at the ugliness of the box, which was about three inches square. It had a hideous looking red eye etched into the surface and all around it were crude, indistinguishable images.

All of the sudden she was rocked with a vision. It lasted only a few seconds, but she clearly saw a vision of Robert Torpe jumping to his death, followed by a series of images of the same victim, alive this time, looking wracked with worry and pain, running an errant hand through his thinning hair, wrapping the box in a cloth and shoving it under the bed violently before backing away—

And then the vision ended, and Sara was left, holding the box. She looked at the item again, this time with renewed interest. This was what she'd been anticipating, however little she cared to admit it. This was the reason she came into the apartment in the first place.

The Witchblade was warning her.

The bracelet burned on her wrist, and Sara set the box down on the edge of the bed, sighing tiredly. It seemed like she never got a day off anymore, without this damned piece of jewelry telling her what to do. In any case, she couldn't deny the Witchblade now that it had warned her—that much she had learned by now. Robert Torpe died from unnatural causes, and it had something to do with this box. Picking herself up from the floor, Sara left the artifact for the cops to retrieve with the other evidence, and returned to the living room, realizing for the first time that she was starting to become intrigued by the case…

She passed her partner, looking around the kitchen for clues, and called out, "On second thought Danny, I think we should take this case. There… may be some more to Torpe's death than I thought. I'll meet you back at the station." Leaving a perplexed Danny behind, Sara left Torpe's apartment and descended the steps to the street outside.

O-O-O-O

Afternoon found Sara Pezzini sitting at her desk, mulling over the list of artifacts in Torpe's collection. And there were certainly a lot of them.

"Hey, Pez—how's the search going? Find anything telling?" Jake asked perching on the edge of her desk.

Sara looked up from the printed papers resignedly. "No, not a damn thing I'd understand."

"Lemme see—" Jake extended a hand and Sara passed him the papers. "Whoa…" Jake exclaimed, whistling. "All this was his?"

"Yeah, I called my friend Gabriel. He's coming in to help me determine what most of this stuff is, but I'm only interested in his more recent purchases."

"That's a good idea. Gabriel could probably tell you where Torpe got his artifacts. He's got to know connections like that." Jake handed the packet back and looked around. "Hey Pez, if you don't mind my asking, what got you to change your mind? About the case, I mean."

Sara looked at him plaintively. "Gut instinct."

Jake grinned slyly. "Who am I to doubt a woman's intuition? Well," Jake glanced at his watch. "I had Jimmy look up Torpe's phone bill to see who he'd been in contact with lately. I figure maybe some disgruntled seller wanted back whatever he sold to Torpe but Torpe wouldn't sell; he gets the guy to kill himself, so it looks like a suicide, then he can steal back the artifact without any problem. Anyway, Jimmy said he should have the results about now. I'll be right back."

"Take your time." Sara called out, contemplating her rookie partner's assumption. It was possible that his theory had some truth in it. If so, then all they had to do was find out Torpe's last purchase, and trace the seller and they'd have their suspect.

… But then what did all of that have to do with the box she found under the bed?

Sara pulled out the photograph of the box, which was now stowed away in an evidence locker. She examined it, but she didn't get any of the feelings or the accompanying visions that she'd had before. Sighing, she sat back in her chair and massaged her temples with both hands. She was interrupted by a new voice.

"Hey, you look like you could use one of these."

Sara peeked between her fingers. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

Gabriel Bowman walked up to her desk, brandishing a tray of coffee, one of which he handed off to Sara before setting another on Danny's desk.

"Thanks, man." Danny raised the coffee in a gracious gesture and carefully took a sip. Gabriel grinned and removed his own coffee, setting the final one down on the edge of Sara's desk.

"It is. Exhaustion has a habit of sharpening your most ravishing features, Pez."

Sara raised an eyebrow, preening. "Goodness, I'll have to get less sleep more often, then."

"He's right, you know. You seem to be more and more tired lately. There something going on I should know about, partner?" Danny's tone was light, but with the addition of the last word, Sara could tell he was laying the guilt trip on her. Before she'd discovered the Witchblade, she'd been able to open up to Danny about everything. There was never any hint of a communication gap between them…

But ever since she found the gauntlet she'd found herself hiding the most private matters of her life from him. It wasn't healthy, she knew. You didn't hide things from your partner – you just didn't. Yet how could she tell Danny about what was really bothering her? She didn't even know too much herself. She'd found herself spending more and more time with Gabriel simply because he was the only one she could talk to without feeling like she was revealing a very secret part of her. Gabriel knew everything about her situation—sometimes more than she knew—but she still found herself missing the relationship she once had with Danny, and she was sure her partner was starting to feel the same way.

"I guess I got to start getting to bed earlier, huh?" Sara shrugged off Danny's concern and changed the subject. "So, Danny, you able to contact any of our vic's family yet?"

"Yeah, I got a hold of an older sister, Judith Cope, living in Toledo. Says she hasn't spoken to her brother in almost 10 years. He doesn't really keep in contact with the rest of the family. She didn't even know he'd moved to New York."

Jake reentered at that moment, brandishing several sheets of paper. Without looking up or noticing Gabriel, he called out, "Hey, Pez, I got Torpe's cell phone bill, and you won't believe who he's been calling lately—14 calls to—" It was at that moment Jake noticed Gabriel standing there, holding his coffee and watching Jake with the same expectancy as Sara and Danny. "Oh, hey Gabriel," Jake faltered, looking around to avoid speaking.

"14 calls to—?" Danny prompted.

"Um, can I talk to you about this somewhere else, Pez?" Jake asked. "I didn't see Gabe there…"

"It's alright—I called him in to help on this case. He has full access to anything we find out—"

"Still, I'd rather we went in another room…"

"Hey, did you say 'Torpe'?" Gabriel asked, at which Jake's eyes brightened considerably. "As in Robert Torpe?"

"Yeah, I did, why? You've heard of him?"

"Yeah, I know the guy, actually. Why, is he—" Gabriel straightened up visibly. "Oh. So he's… uh, he's dead?"

"Yeah, wait—you knew Robert Torpe, Gabriel?" Sara looked at her friend quizzically.

"Well, no not personally, but I've met the guy. He bought a few things from me in the past, but he's been calling me nonstop the last four days, pestering me about taking some artifact off his hands. It got to a point where I was ready to change my cell phone number, or get a restraining order or something."

"Why was he calling you?" Jake asked him, crossing his arms.

Gabriel, affronted at the rookie's accusatory stance, looked around nervously. "Like I said, he wanted to sell me some artifact – Raleigh's Box, or something like it."

Sara's ears perked at the name, and she rummaged through the photos on her desk, retrieving the photograph of the strange box she'd been studying earlier. "Is this it?" she asked him, handing the younger man the photo.

"Yeah, actually it is. He brought it by Talismaniac yesterday, to convince me in person to take it, but I didn't. He got real crazy and started offering to give it to me, but I was a little freaked out, so I told him to leave instead."

"Why not?" Danny asked curiously. "Why didn't you take the artifact, that is? If he was offering it for free—"

"Well, there's not a whole lot of information about Raleigh's Box. It's based on a really… instable myth, to put it bluntly, and there isn't really a multitude of proof that says it's worth anything. He's the only one in the history of my career who's ever asked for it, so I don't have any buyers either."

"Do you have any proof that he offered this to you for free?" Jake pulled out a pad of paper and pen, poised and ready, but Gabriel eyed the items with disdain.

"No, I don't, seeing as it was a verbal conversation," he said, annoyed. "Look, guys, am I being implicated in something here?"

"No," Sara said pointedly, shooting a glare at McCarty. "No, Gabriel, you're not being accused of anything. We're just trying to figure out whatever information we can about the victim. Jake, why don't you go get the box from the evidence locker for me?"

Jake looked dubious for a moment but, finally beat, sulked off toward the evidence room in the basement, leaving Sara, Danny, and Gabriel alone.

"I was at my apartment the whole morning, Sara. I swear it." Gabriel insisted, strung out. "You believe me, right?"

"Of course I believe you." Sara said. "But I was wondering if you could take another look at that photo for me—at the box. I want you to tell me everything you know about it—the myth, legend, whatever."

Gabriel took a seat. Danny watched silently as the younger man studied the photograph, running his fingers over the surface thoughtfully. "Well the theory goes like this: A philosopher of the 18th century, Edwin Raleigh, was a real big follower of realist human behavior theory. He subscribed to the idea that humans were essentially evil, that they had an innate immorality that caused them to always end up committing sin, no matter what their original intentions were. There's only one problem with realist theory though, which is that it cannot possibly be proved that humans have an inborn tendency toward sin, so to discredit all of his opposition, he decided to build a device that would prove his theory was correct."

Gabriel, now lost in thought, sat down in the chair opposite Sara's desk, still holding the photograph. "Well after that, no one ever really heard from him again until his death. He sort of became a hermit after his claim, never came out of the house much after that, living completely by himself. Since he shut off all contact with the rest of the world, the rest of the world kinda forgot him, and he lost his place among the more notable realist philosophers in history."

"So, this is supposed to be the device he created then?" Sara asked.

"Yeah, supposedly after Raleigh's death, the townsfolk were cleaning out his house and found this buried under a floorboard. Buried with it was a lengthy, written confession that claimed the Box was the ultimate proof of the innate tendency of human beings toward evil... The only problem is that no one's ever been able to recover the confession that supposedly existed, and so we can't really prove that this is the box in the legend."

"How did he die?" Danny asked.

Gabriel leaned back in the chair, scratching his chin. "Well that's the interesting thing, I guess. He committed suicide, actually—publicly."

Sara raised her eyebrows. "That's quite a coincidence."

Gabriel shrugged. "I guess."

"Well, if Torpe knew about this myth, though, couldn't he just have set his suicide up so that it looked like there were parallels? … I just don't know if I can buy this whole murder theory. We've got only insubstantial evidence to prove it."

"Danny's right." Gabriel admitted, setting down the photograph. "The guy was probably just a nut-job fanatic who's trying to perpetuate the myth."

Sara nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right. Still, I'm gonna check the Box out in your name and let you take it home—do some research, see if you can find out anything else about it, like where Torpe might've gotten it from and such."

Jake walked back in with the bag, begrudgingly handing it over to Gabriel at Sara's request. "I'll see what I can do." Gabriel told her, standing up. He shot a brief look at Jake. "By the way, I brought you some coffee," he drawled.

"Thanks." Jake said, leaning back against Danny's desk smugly.

"See you later, Gabriel." Danny said, shaking his head at the rookie's disdain.

"I'm just gonna go with you to sign out the Box, OK?" Sara told Gabriel. "I'll be right back," she told her partners.

Sara waited until they were at a safe distance, out of earshot from the two men before pulling Gabriel aside. "I wanted to tell you something else about that thing," she explained. "It was when I was in the guy's apartment looking for evidence. I kept getting a weird feeling investigating the place, like I was supposed to be there or something. Then I found the Box stuffed under his bed and the Witchblade showed me some visions of the guy's death."

"Are you for real?" Gabriel looked at her.

"I wish I was lying, kiddo." Sara shook her head. "This thing's never gonna go away, is it?" She asked, exasperated.

"I guess not. It's all in your destiny, I suppose." Gabriel grinned. "Well, that should certainly make this more interesting. I'll definitely invest my interests in this, Pez."

"Great. Thank you so much, Gabriel. You have no idea what your help means to me."

"It's my pleasure." Gabriel waited until the Box was signed out in his name before saying goodbye to Sara and starting back home.

Sara watched him go, thankful for the artifacts dealer's interest in her job, realizing that his knowledge was coming in handy a lot lately. She sighed for the umpteenth time that morning and went back inside to work on the evidence.

TBC…