Title: Visionary

By: Kara

Begun: November 22, 2004

Finished: Almost finished!

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 Four - Consequences

"So, let me get this straight: You happen to take a wrong turn getting back to the church to pick me up and you end up ten city blocks away at the house of Victoria Frank, just before her two kids are about to be kidnapped by mobsters working for Rogan Fletcher?" Danny gave her a disparaging look. Sara was too frozen to answer. "And you did all this after you prevented a purse snatching in Central Park and went to pick up Gabriel?"

"You said you wanted the truth," Sara told him. "That's what I did today."

Danny laughed, at his wit's end. "Yes, Sara. I said I wanted the truth. Somehow I can't help but think that you're leaving out a good part of it though… Now what could give me that idea? Oh—maybe it's the fact that you haven't told me how you knew about those crimes!"

Sara didn't speak, at a loss for words. There was no possible explanation as to why she would be in three different parts of town in two hours to prevent as many crimes. She'd just plain run out of excuses.

"I know you have secrets you want to keep Sara, but you can't keep expecting me to be okay with that. I'm your partner. I've known you for years, and I don't want to see you get hurt like you did today. You could have been killed!"

"I could be killed every day I'm on this job."

"Yeah, but the odds of it happening every day have increased ever since you met Gabriel—"

"Hey," Sara stopped him. "Do NOT blame Gabriel Bowman for my attitude lately. He has nothing to do with how I've been behaving."

"Nothing?"

"…OK, well he might have something to do with today, but we haven't exactly figured the 'why' part out yet… In any case, he's not responsible for my actions, and I don't want you to blame him."

"Then what! What is it that's making you continue to lie to me!"

Before Sara could answer the door to the office they were in opened and Jake leaned in. "Pez, Gabriel's on the phone. He says it's an emergency."

Danny threw his arms in the air. "Of course it is."

Sara looked at her partner apologetically. "Danny, I have to take this—"

Danny nodded solemnly. "I know you do. Just don't expect me to be here when you get back."

Helpless to respond, Sara stood and left the room, taking the phone on her desk.

"Sara? I think I've figured out the purpose of Raleigh's Box."

"I'll be there in five minutes."

o-o-o-o

"So Raleigh wanted to prove to people that the world was basically evil, right?"

Sara looked at him. "Go on."

"But he has no way of proving this substantially, so he looks for further evidence. He builds the Box, and somehow transforms it into a device that shows people the truth of human nature—don't ask me how. Anyway, he instills this power into the Box, and adorns it with the blazing eye on the front. The eye is a symbol for truth, kind of like the "all-seeing eye," and because it's engulfed in flames, it means the truth is … evil. All the eye can see is the evil in the world."

Gabriel walked to the other side of the room, his expression heated. "Anyone who opens the Box must want to know the truth about the world too. Raleigh's colleagues never respected him for his radical beliefs, so he decided to show them the truth physically—by allowing them to look into the Box. Now, here's something that never got into history books— Edwin Raleigh was once suspected of being involved in the deaths of several social theorists of his time who were in opposition to him. Three men, they all committed suicide within two years. Raleigh's Box was suspected to have something to do with it."

"Anyone who opens it ends up offing themselves?" Sara asked, concerned.

"Well, in a sense, I guess. Basically anyone who opens it sees the evil things that are happening in the present, and if all they can see is evil, then that's all they believe exists. When they opened the Box, they were instilled with visions of evil, visions that ended up driving them mad and acting as a catalyst for suicide."

"Well, aren't you afraid that might happen to you?" Sara regarded the younger man, who seemed not to realize his predicament.

"No, I'm not. For one thing, I realize that the visions are intended to only show you evil. I, however, know that good exists—I mean you're living proof, aren't you? Raleigh's colleagues probably weren't able to stop the visions from happening, because of the limited resources of their time, but it's a lot easier for us to prevent these things from happening. We can use this to our advantage—we can use this to save innocent people's lives!"

Sara wasn't convinced. "Still, I don't know Gabriel… I don't think it's such a good idea to be messing with the future like this. Sooner or later this is bound to come back and kick you in the ass."

"What makes you so sure? Maybe I'm the one to beat this thing. I mean, I've got a legendary warrior on my side, how can I lose!" Gabriel beamed. "At least help me out until we can figure out how to stop the visions," Gabriel said. "Come on, this is a good thing."

Sara sighed. "If you say so." Sara had to admit it was a tempting idea—the chance to save more lives… but that didn't stop her from being concerned at the detrimental effect it was having on her own…

o-o-o-o

The negative effects continued into the next day, as Sara trudged into the precinct—weary from only four hours of sleep—and found out that Danny had asked to be paired with another detective for the day. She'd tried to confront him about it, but he avoided her until he was able to leave to a new crime scene and the chance had been lost.

Now she was driving alongside default partner, McCarty, on their way to Paul Reynolds' house in Manhattan. "You look like hell," the rookie had commented airily when she climbed into the passenger's side next to him. "You get much sleep last night?"

"Not enough," Sara answered, too tired and too much in pain from the wound to her arm to come up with anything more substantive. After his explanation of the Box, Gabriel had had another vision of a tragic car crash which they'd just barely been able to prevent. Sara had gone home to rest, but Gabriel called her four more times that night to help him prevent two more muggings, a rape, and a convenience store holdup that would have killed two clerks. The visions seemed to be increasing as the night went on, and Sara wasn't sure how much more she could take. She'd only just come from the second mugging when she realized it was time to go back to work. She almost welcomed the slower pace of the Torpe case.

Paul Reynolds lived alone in an apartment building in Manhattan's lower East Side. It was roughly middle-class, not nearly as nice as Torpe's apartment. Reynolds answered after a few moments, and a scowl came instantly over his face.

"You're that woman from the church yesterday, aren't you?"

"Detective Pezzini, homicide. This is Detective McCarty. We're here to ask you a few questions about Robert Torpe's death."

"I don't know anything about Torpe," Reynolds answered abruptly. "You heard me yesterday. I hated the guy, why would I care about his personal problems?"

"Word has it, you were part of his personal problems," McCarty provided.

Reynolds opened his mouth to speak and sighed. "We've been competing these last few months for the same promotion at the bank we both work at. That sort of thing tends to give you a certain animosity toward your competition," Reynolds said sardonically. "Especially when it's obvious that you need that promotion more than the other guy."

"Enough animosity to drive a man to kill himself?" Sara countered.

"No." Reynolds looked at her indignantly. "Enough animosity to make his life at work a personal hell, but I didn't push the guy off a building, for Chrissake. That stupid bastard did it himself. And I don't feel one bit sorry for him."

Sara rolled her eyes. "Look, can we just get your number in case we have any more questions about Torpe?"

"I'm in the phone book. You can look me up if you need me that badly." Without another word, Reynolds slammed the door in their faces.

"How about that woman's intuition now, Pez?" McCartey asked as the two descended the steps toward their vehicle.

"Well, he certainly has a motive—the promotion. As far as whether he had any part in the crime…" Sara shook her head, thinking of the Witchblade. "I can't tell yet."

o-o-o-o

At their lunchtime, Jake confessed to having some paperwork for a previous case to finish up, which was just fine in Sara's opinion, because it meant she could go see Gabriel. He hadn't called her all morning and she was beginning to worry, though she was also slightly grateful that she hadn't had any more spontaneous acts of vigilantism to perform since that morning.

Glancing briefly at the telltale Talismaniac logo on the door, Sara knocked twice and stood back. "Come in!" Gabriel's voice called out from the other side and Sara pushed the door open. The young artifacts dealer was sitting at his kitchen table surrounded by piles of old, weather-worn books and documents that looked like they were around as long as the Witchblade.

"Hey, Pez, I'm glad you're here—"

"Not another vision…?"

"No, not since this morning," Gabriel told her, not looking up from his research. "I just wanted to tell you about this new thing I found regarding Raleigh's Box—" Gabriel scrambled for something in a pile of papers that had grown considerably in the time she'd been away. Sara cocked an eyebrow suspiciously and regarded her younger friend.

"Christ Gabriel, you look terrible!" she commented, noticing the dark rings under his eyes.

"Thank you, should I log that away as a compliment?" Gabriel drawled, not looking up.

"Did you get any sleep last night, kid?"

"Well I tried—" Gabriel said idly, still ignoring her. "But I couldn't get to sleep. Every time I tried I had another vision, and when I wasn't having premonitions I kept getting these visions of Torpe committing suicide… and considering the potential that I may be heading down that same path, well… I've been having a little trouble getting to sleep." Gabriel grinned sheepishly at her then thrust a photograph at her that he'd been holding at his side.

"You having second thoughts about this 'superhero' status of yours?" she asked, taking the photograph, which appeared to be a picture of an old document written in another language.

"Of course not. I'm good. Until we can figure this out, I'm ready to keep going."

"I'm not gonna let what happened to Torpe happen to you, Gabriel." Sara told him, leveling with him. "You know that, right?"

"Of course," Gabriel told her then grinned, Sara assumed, for her benefit.

"So, what's this?" She held up the photo.

"It's a letter written by Raleigh. I can tell because it's in his handwriting, but it doesn't really make sense. It's written like a prophecy. Rather long-winded—I suspect Raleigh was pretty high on himself to even consider writing something like this about his 'creation'—but it basically says that the holder of the Box will be gifted with the 'true burden of humanity,' essentially the knowledge of human evil. I guess he meant that whoever opens the Box will get the visions. He goes on to say that since the knowledge is so grave, that anyone who looks upon the truth will be cursed with that knowledge. Anyone who gets the visions… will die."

Gabriel finished and Sara looked up at him. "And all this hasn't deterred you from continuing your rescue missions?"

Gabriel shrugged then sighed. "I don't know… I mean, when I get a vision I really get the feeling that I'm supposed to do something about it—like it's my destiny or something. You of all people should understand the burden of destiny. It's not that much different from you and the Witchblade, isn't it?"

"Well, you'd know more about that than I do… But still, I don't like the feel of this Gabriel. The Witchblade warned me about that artifact. Usually that means very bad things are about to go down, and I don't want you to rush headlong into something like this."

"I understand, it's just—you don't know. You can't possibly know what it's like to have these visions. Well, of course you can't, but still… I'm not gonna stop, Sara. I can't."

Gabriel's eyes suddenly rolled back in his head and he started for the floor again. Sara, cursing under her breath, rushed forward and pulled him into a chair before he could crumple to the ground. A few seconds later he opened his eyes again, breathing heavily.

"You've got to learn to sit down when you feel one of these coming on, or your luck is gonna run out pretty soon."

"There's not really much warning, Pez. It just sort of… happens."

"What is it now?"

Gabriel stared at her coolly. "Just your run of the mill murder this time."

o-o-o-o

Sara called into Jake that she'd be late coming back from lunch and drove Gabriel on her motorcycle to a branch of the New York Post, where he'd claimed the murder took place. "There was a guy sitting behind a huge desk. I didn't see the name too clearly—I think it said Les—Leslie?"

"Leslie Hart—he's a major reporter for the Post. He just ran a story last week exposing a police chief in the 55th Precinct for corruption… The cop ended up committing suicide before they could take him in."

"Well someone—relative, coworker, or friend—wants some serious revenge for the story. A gunman gets in some how and shoots Hart three times. I think we can stop it from happening."

"I'm gonna have to trust you on that." Sara said, pulling into the parking garage and taking the nearest space she could find. She and Gabriel rushed up to the receptionist's office. "Is Leslie Hart in?"

Sara asked the woman.

"Yes, he is, but I'm afraid he's in a meeting. You're going to have to write down your name and Mr. Hart will schedule an appointment with you as soon as he can—"

"Excuse me," Gabriel snuck a peek at the woman's name placard. "—Jenny." He grinned at her coyly. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, honestly, but I have some incredibly urgent news for Mr. Hart that can't wait until tomorrow or even later today. You don't think it's the least bit possible we could sneak up there for just a minute?"

Jenny smiled wanly at Gabriel and replied, "No, I'm afraid not, sir. Now, if you'll just give me your names—"

When the woman started to reach for her pen, Sara stepped in, pulling out her badge. "Detective Sara Pezzini, from the 11th Precinct. I'm an informant for Mr. Hart and I have some urgent news that I need to give him right away. If you could just please allow us to go up, I'd really appreciate it."

Jenny regarded the badge for a moment then said, "Just a moment, I'll see if he's busy." She stood up and left and Sara threw a sidelong glance at Gabriel.

"Cool it, Casanova. Getting us kicked out is definitely not gonna do us any good."

Gabriel shrugged and turned around, scanning the waiting room with his eyes. There were about ten people hanging around the room, either waiting in chairs or talking to coworkers. So far, none of them looked familiar… until the door opened and a man in his thirties walked in, looking around earnestly.

"Oh my God, Sara—that's him," Gabriel whispered urgently.

"Where?" Sara turned around and saw immediately who Gabriel was talking about. He was heading their way… "I'll go stall him." She stepped away from the counter and intercepted the man, who looked concerned at her interference.

"Excuse me, but do you work here?" Sara asked sweetly.

"No, I'm just looking for someone."

"Are you sure? Because you look so familiar, I could have sworn you were that guy who wrote those amazing editorials on the Henrietti restaurant chain last month?"

"No, that wasn't me. I'm in a hurry, ma'm. Excuse me—" He began to push past her but Sara reached out a hand to stop him.

That was the moment that Leslie Hart and his receptionist chose to walk back into the room.

"You!" the man in front of Sara shouted, immediately attracting the attention of everyone in the room. "You're the one who wrote those lies about Chief Tamblyn!"

Leslie Hart, a gray-haired man in his early fifties, actually grinned, looking at the intruder pitiably. "Excuse me? Who the hell are you?"

"I'm a friend of his! A friend that had to walk in and find him dead in his own home, hanging from a rope from the ceiling, all because you had to say those things about him."

"I hate to tell you this, buddy, but those things were the truth. I'm sorry Chief Tamblyn couldn't handle the truth about himself, but that's his problem, not mine."

"They were lies! Chief would never do something like that!" Sara tried to calm the man down, but he would have none of it. "So now it IS your problem!"

A lot of things happened at once that neither Sara, nor Gabriel, for all their premonitions, were ready for. The intruder pulled out a pistol from his pocket and raised it to fire. Hart's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as he tried to dive out of the way. Sara tried to disarm the man, but he was surprisingly strong, pushing her off of him with the other arm. He fired a few rounds in the direction of Hart. People behind them screamed and began to run for the nearest exits.

Sara jumped back in for a second round, tackling the man to the ground and landing a vicious punch to his jaw. Her arm ached like hell from the hit, but in her adrenaline rush, she tried to ignore the pain. The shooter dropped his weapon and scrambled to regain it, but Sara got the first, kicking it away from his reach. She pulled the man's hands behind his back just as a number of security guards rushed in to help.

Relinquishing the shooter to their custody, Sara turned around and immediately paled. Leslie Hart was still standing, uninjured and shaken, but his receptionist, Jenny was lying on the ground next to him in a pool of her own blood.

Gabriel knelt by her side, checking her neck and then her wrist fervently for a pulse. Sara rushed over and knelt down on Jenny's other side. "I can't feel a pulse." Gabriel told her bluntly. "Sara, help me."

Sara looked down at the young woman's eyes, still open with a faraway look in them, then at the blood staining the tiled floor around them. She didn't need to check for a pulse. She already knew they were too late.

"Come on, Gabriel." Sara reached out and tugged on her friend's arm. "We've got to get out of here, before we have to try to explain this to someone."

"But—this wasn't supposed to happen." Gabriel muttered, thunderstruck. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way."

"I know, but she's gone, and there's nothing we can do to fix that. We gotta go, now." Using a little more force, Sara pulled her friend up and whisked him out of the room past the wandering eyes of the curious victims in the room.

"You don't understand, Sara," Gabriel said pleadingly, when they reached the parking garage. "In my vision—Hart died, but that was it. No one else died in my vision. No one else was supposed to die. I did that."

Sara wanted to say it wasn't his fault, but how could she argue when they had clearly changed the course of the future with their actions? "Maybe this is a hint, Gabriel." Sara told him. "Maybe this is a sign you should stop this. The Box was created to show evil, maybe that's all it ends up causing."

"But all those other people's lives—" Gabriel shook his head. "I saved those people's lives, I can save more. I just have to do this right. I have to figure it out faster."

"No, Gabriel, you don't get it. You're messing with history here. You can't keep doing this and expect everything to turn out okay."

Gabriel turned away from his friend, refusing to meet her gaze. "This was a fluke. It wasn't supposed to happen, but I can accept that it did. That doesn't mean I'm ready to stop helping people in my visions. I was supposed to have these premonitions—"

"Maybe you weren't, Gabriel!" Sara finally shouted, exasperated. "Maybe that was a fluke!"

Gabriel regarded her angrily. "Why would you think that?"

"I don't know," Sara admitted. "The Witchblade obviously warned me about this for a reason. I just have a hard time believing that the powers that be picked a teenaged artifacts dealer to be the savior of the earth."

"Oh, but it's so much more believable that they picked a New York police detective to do it?" His tone was angry now, and Sara was instantly affronted.

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant—"

"You just meant that it's alright if you're saving people from the forces of darkness, but if someone else tries it, then they're just trying to boost their ego by being a hero?"

"You're out of line, Bowman." Sara countered, looking at him gravely.

"No, I think I'm right on target, for once. I'm sick of living in your shadow all the time, Pez. I can help people too, I have helped people, and if you can't accept that you're not the only one with the power to do so now, then maybe I should do it on my own."

"Oh, yeah, I'd like to see you try that," Sara said sardonically. "Please, try to save all of New York City without a vehicle."

"I'll find a way," Gabriel said begrudgingly, turning and walking away.

"You're gonna get yourself killed!" Sara shouted after him, too angry to tell him to stop. Where did he get off implying that she was jealous of his abilities? She couldn't think of a more ridiculous suggestion.

"At least I won't be sitting on my ass and watching others get killed! You're the one that talks to ghosts, Pezzini." Gabriel yelled, slamming the door to the stairs open. "I'll be more than happy to leave that part to you."

Sara stood in her spot a moment after he'd disappeared, silently fuming then headed in the direction of her motorcycle. Let the kid get himself killed, she thought angrily. If he didn't want her help, then that was his problem. She had her own case to get back to.