Chapter Five: Two Paths Converged in the Woods

Spike shook his head at the baby purple dragon bouncing around his feet. Sparx buzzed back and forth, the pair conversing in a rapid-fire fashion. Though Spike couldn't hear the dragonfly himself, it was easy to guess what he was saying as Spyro held forth on all the dragons he'd helped find. To hear the little dragon talk, every last one of them had been an Old Dragon and rescuing them had been Destiny.

Keen ears picked up a whisper of sound right before Lou clapped his shoulder; the two constables grinned at each other, mischief dancing in both pairs of dark eyes. "Where you headed after shift?"

One shoulder hiked. "Prolly a park. Spyro's way too amped up."

"Not Avalar?" Lou pressed, tapping his tactical pouch.

The bomb tech paused, considering, then shook his head. "You go. If the lil guy's right, then the fairies need to focus on Neltharion."

Lou grimaced, knowing just as well as his friend that the fairies of Avalar were liable to lavish all their attention on Spyro as 'Aithusa's firstborn egg' if the purple dragon was there. But if it was just him and the black dragon egg, then he could give them the lowdown without any…distractions.

"You got that collar 'Lanna made?"

Spike quirked a fresh grin. "Never leave home without it." The grin fell away. "Asked her to change it from a crup, though."

The other constable winced. He'd been the one to suggest a crup disguise so Spyro could be kept magic-side, but none of them had considered that real crups and their owners would frequent magic-side parks. They were just lucky Spyro hadn't flamed the crups who'd tried to bite Spike; as it was, the witch had tried to file a complaint only to find out the Aurors already knew about the incident – and weren't impressed with her lack of control over her crups.

"What'd she change it to?"

"I was all for a Dalmatian, but 'Lanna said no."

"Why?"

"Too tall and wiry," Spike explained. "Dalmatians are runners. 'Lanna said we could get away with a big dog, but it has to be big enough at the shoulders and ribcage so Spyro's wings won't clip through."

Lou frowned. "When Lance was stuck, she used a cat illusion."

The bomb tech nodded. "Yeah, but she made sure not to let anybody touch 'im."

Dark eyes widened. "Wait, this isn't just an illusion?"

"Nope." Spike bounced on his heels. "Anybody wants to pet my 'dog', they can and they won't know the difference. But that meant we needed a dog that's bigger than Spyro all-round."

Young whistled low and cast a glance of expectant inquiry at his friend.

The other constable chuckled. "We picked out an Alaskan Malamute."

Lou arched a brow. "Spyro's not that tall, buddy."

The bomb tech's smile turned wicked. "That's why 'Lanna made him look like a puppy."

There was a moment as Lou absorbed the information. Then he frowned. "That'd make him a little kid magnet, Spike. They'll hug him right around his wings."

Spike's grin faltered before he shook his head. "It's okay, Lou."

"Really." Lou arched a pointed brow, casting his best friend a sardonic look.

The raven scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Dragons' wings aren't like gryphon wings, Lou. Way Lance explained to me, gryphons have hollow bones like a bird, but their magic will reinforce all the bones to keep 'em from breaking. That's why they can move on the ground like a lion. There's some reinforcement in their wings, but not as much."

" 'Cause that would interfere with their ability to fly?" Lou ventured.

"Something like that." Spike thought for a moment, searching for the right words. "Dragons are different. Their bones aren't hollow, not even in their wings. Their bodies are too big for that, so instead their magic makes 'em lighter. Otherwise the adult dragons would leave huge footprints everywhere."

Young blinked. "But that's modern dragons; Spyro's an Old Dragon."

"A dragon is a dragon," Spike replied. "We had to be careful of the lil guy's wings for the first couple weeks, 'cause the bones were really soft right out of the egg, but he couldn't pull off the stunts he learned in Avalar if his wings were easy to break."

Lou whistled low. "But he's still gotta grow, right?"

The other constable nodded. "His bones are hard enough now to stand up to abuse, but they're still pliable enough to grow. I guess that's part of their magic, too." A faint partial grin appeared. "I asked the Chronicler how hard adult dragon bones are; he rapped me on the head with his walking stick and said they were harder than my skull."

Lou snickered at his friend's sheepish tone. "So in other words, lil kids can hug Spyro as tight as they want and he's just gonna be grinning at you over their shoulders."

"Pretty much," Spike confirmed, expression turning wicked once more.

For a late weekday afternoon, there were a surprising number of little kids out and about with their mothers in the forest preserve tucked in the middle of the city, not far from the lake. It was farther out of his way than Spike usually went, but he knew the park trails wandered and meandered for several kilometers. The routes were practically endless, bound only by stamina and imagination. They'd been walking for over half-an-hour and Spyro was still amped up, practically bouncing along the trail.

Fortunately, the mothers mistook it for puppish enthusiasm and most of them looked on indulgently as their offspring approached the excited dragon. The tangible illusion disguised Spyro as a partially grown black Alaskan Malamute puppy. White fur adorned his legs, chest, muzzle, the inside of his ears, and two spots above his dark-brown eyes, giving him a classic sled dog appearance.

Well-practiced in his role, Spyro pretended to sniff each child's outstretched hands, tweaking the magic around him to make his puppy nose twitch as pointed ears perked up in interest. He made sure to let his tongue loll out, grinning a canine grin as the children petted him. Some of the bolder ones hugged him, right around his shoulders and wings. He always permitted it for a few seconds before shaking himself loose. The young dragon never licked the children; the thought was icky, even if the humans expected him to.

For his part, Spike coached the inquisitive children to go slow and always intervened if a child came up to Spyro too quickly or too boldly. He refused to let any of them harass the 'puppy' or pull on Spyro's illusory ears or tail; there had been a few times when he'd picked the dragon up, casting the parents 'control your kids' glares as he did so.

Eventually, the pair wandered deep enough into the preserve that they were alone for whole stretches of trail. Spyro ranged over a meter ahead, occasionally tugging on the leash. It remained a bone of contention; Spyro knew he didn't need it, Spike knew he didn't need it, but leashes were required for any dogs walking in the preserve, even if they were really dragons in disguise.

Spike had done his best to make the leash less onerous on his charge; he'd picked out the longest retractable leash he could find and there was a small rune on the collar that would let Spyro unhook himself from the leash in an emergency. For most walks, the bomb tech let the young dragon range to the outer limits of the eight meter leash's length, but with the number of little kids they'd encountered, he'd opted for a bit under a meter and a half. Best to have a way to quickly yank Spyro away from any pushy brats, even if the little dragon yelled at him through the 'team sense'.

The minutes ticked away, both of them enjoying the outdoors and the occasional sounds of birds chirping in the trees. Spike felt his shoulders relaxing; much as he'd always be a city boy, his Animagus form had taken away his slight phobia of forests. One hot call early in Sam's tenure on the team, he'd told Lou that he was Roman and his people didn't do well in the woods, but he couldn't imagine ever saying that now. Not with the faint scent of the wild filtering in and his inner canine perking up.

A happy grin emerged and Spike found himself hoping it would take Spyro another few hours before he calmed down. The longer he could be outside in the forest, the better.

Something flickered, pulling her attention. She lifted her head, a puff of smoke erupting as her long sinewy neck curled around. There was a faint pulse, appearing one moment and disappearing the next as the ley lines throbbed beneath the earth. Deep brown narrowed a hair, the slitted pupils focusing through the trees as her power reached out.

The wind blew several scents to her as she focused on her purely magical senses. The stench of humans, but there was a touch of something more…exotic. Mortal and akin to the humans' four-legged slaves, but…untamed. Wild as she was, with a freedom no human could ever seize. Another scent drifted to her snout – wizard magic. Fragile and easily broken – a mask, though she couldn't yet tell what was hidden. The human wasn't close enough yet, not with the ley lines surging in a way she didn't understand.

Were the ley lines trying to hide the human from her? The Welsh Green snorted, disregarding that – no magic would side with a human over her. But around her, the forest's trees bent and swayed in a wind she couldn't feel against her scales. In that moment, the mother dragon realized something.

There was Magic at work here, Magic older than she was, older than her kind with a whisper of a land where Men were welcome and she was not. And far from objecting to the humans, as she had thought, the forest around her welcomed them. The ley lines embraced the sprawling human enclave, rejoicing for reasons beyond her ken.

All of that combined to make the mother dragon angry. Very angry. How could it be that humans were welcome and she was not? How could it be that the ley lines would deny her – that they would keep her from her young? Then she caught a fresh glimpse of that faint magical pulse – and stilled in horrified shock.

It was a good thing Team One had gone home for the day and he could keep the 'team sense' off. Otherwise they would've overheard him as he cursed himself and the Troy siblings to the depths of hell and back again. Oh, he'd suspected the SRU's budget had been targeted the past few years because of him, but…

Greg Parker pulled away from his laptop and stalked to the window, counting to one-hundred in Sumerian under his breath as he did so. It didn't help; anger mixed with the wet on his cheeks as he stared out blindly at the city beyond. He'd gone back to the beginning. To the very first budget, way back when the unit had been little more than an idea. An idea the city liked well enough to try, but not enough to throw too many resources at. Calling it a shoe-string budget was generous, but that had been the start.

He'd traced each step, each success and subsequent increase in the SRU's budget as the fledgling unit grew, proving itself a thousand times over. It had been incredible to watch the budget expand, right along with the unit's numbers. Incredible to think of how valuable Toronto had found the specialized unit, even back in the days when they'd fought for each success, clawing to save every life they could. Easy to save the victims, but at one point, every SRU Sergeant had had to justify saving the subjects' lives in their after-action reports.

And then…then he'd found the first year their budget had gone down. Anathema; he could practically feel the bewildered confusion bleeding through the revised budget submitted by Commander Akin. The SRU had still been building up resources and officers; to reduce the budget during such a critical year had choked their unit. Drastically curtailed how many teams they could field, both during that year and in the future. As good as they were now, Parker could only imagine how good they might've been if the young unit had been allowed to keep growing and flourishing as it had before then.

Shame writhed in his chest because he'd known that year. Known it in an instant and a flash and he'd understood. Understood as Commander Akin never had – that had been his first year. The year he'd applied for the SRU because he'd known he couldn't stay in Homicide. Not any more, not after his bender and the loss of his family. He'd considered transferring out of Toronto, starting fresh in a new city, but… Toronto was his home. Even while utterly broken, he'd known he couldn't just leave without trying to stay.

But… Every year since he'd joined, the Troy siblings tightened their grip. Heck, they hadn't had to even try some years; once the politicians smelt blood in the water, they'd gone after his beloved unit all on their own. Sometimes, the SRU had been able to hold its own, even expand the budget – and oh, how proud Greg had been of those years, knowing just how hard Akin and Holleran had fought for them.

Those years had been the rare, sparkling exceptions; most years had been a bloodbath as the unit lost financial ground it could scarce afford. In despair, Parker watched as the funds slated for their unit were whittled down, until they could hardly afford to maintain their current equipment, much less invest in better. Each time they restocked their supplies of smoke grenades and flash bangs meant another month when they couldn't replace worn-out equipment. Ammo slated for the range went from plentiful to so scarce that in recent years, Holleran had cut his own pay off the books to supplement the ammo purchases, desperate to pay for the teams' quals even if the SRU couldn't afford any more than that.

A thousand different ways to get even – the death of a thousand cuts, but they hadn't inflicted it on him, they'd inflicted it on his people. And that hurt more than any fire or car bomb ever could. He had little doubt they'd known that; why else leave him alive until the bitter end?

Maybe he should've left Toronto after all… Greg knew, in his head, that he couldn't possibly have predicted the Troy siblings would target his unit, just because he was in it. Heck, they shouldn't have even known he was still alive, but they had. He had to wonder if they'd ever been fooled by John Reese's death.

Wiping the moisture away, Parker turned back towards his laptop. Maybe he should've left back then, but he hadn't and it was far too late for that now. Besides, it wasn't like the politicians would back down just because he was gone, anyway. No, the SRU was still the plum that sucked up resources the politicians were itching to get their claws on. The only way to protect his people was to fight like heck. And part of that was to prove how early and often the SRU had been plundered over the years. Once he laid that out, if he was lucky, he could use the shock factor to introduce his initiatives to start expanding the SRU again for the first time since the year he'd joined.

He'd just never imagined how painful it would be to collect the evidence – never dreamed how bad it was until he'd seen the budgets himself. Heck, the budget they had now was, in practical terms, even more of a shoe-string budget than the SRU's very first budget. Greg's jaw tightened as he stared at his computer. He would do this – he would win against politicians cannier and far more experienced than he was.

He had to; failure wasn't an option.

Commander Holleran stared down at the laptop screen, expression closed as he regarded the information on the Powerpoint presentation his subordinate had put together. Unpolished and not at all ready for the political…battlegrounds…of their city, but he could see the potential. Just as he could see why Parker had brought the first draft to him. The shame and guilt that warred behind each bullet point on the slides.

A part of him wished he'd put the pieces together himself. But he hadn't had the right vantage, nor the missing piece of Geb Romulus' true identity. He'd never even met the man, not until after Parker had reappeared two months after the factory fire shootout, more dead than alive, but stubbornly clinging to hope behind a gaunt, starving frame, tattered feet, and an Animagus control collar. If he had known then just how dire Parker's condition was, he never would've permitted the man to go back undercover for an hour, never mind a week.

And afterwards? It had never occurred to him to go back through the SRU's historical budget with a fine-toothed comb. He'd gone through the present year's budget and quietly applied a bit of pressure to the mayor in light of a few anomalies he'd found. Gotten them enough funding to make it through to the new fiscal year. Mere crumbs in the face of his lieutenant's evidence of a decade-long campaign against their whole unit.

Behind his wire glasses he shifted his attention to his second-in-command. The stocky man's gaze was lowered, fixed on his desk. The trained negotiator, deliberately telegraphing his emotions – Holleran knew well that Parker only did that with those he trusted. Respect alone was not enough for Greg to drop his guard.

Norm had seen enough as a police officer that he carefully did not consider where – or when – the younger man had first started developing a mask over his emotions or the beginnings of his negotiation skills. Instead, he cleared his throat, drawing hazel up. For a moment, they tightened, defensiveness rising, then Parker swallowed and let the grief show. Fear, too, but mostly grief.

The taller, leaner man reached out, resting his open palm on his lieutenant's shoulder. "Greg. You didn't know. How could you?"

The responding chuckle held a touch of bitter behind the water, but it was there. "Still." The merest, barest whisper.

"No." Holleran waited for Greg to look up again before he shook his head. "Commander Akin knew about your history, Lieutenant."

Caught off guard, Parker blinked, hazel widening as surprise overrode his other emotions. "Is that why…?"

"Why he gave you a chance?" Holleran finished. "It was ultimately his call, you know."

Greg shook his head, mute.

Holleran shifted back, remembering; he'd been a Sergeant in those days, not as highly regarded as Daniel Rangford or Barney Fletcher, but the SRU had been so small that all the Sergeants and the commander got involved if Rangford and Fletcher disagreed on a new recruit. And the debate on Detective Greg Parker had been fierce indeed.

Ironically, Rangford had been dead set against recruiting a man who'd just come out of rehab for alcoholism, but Fletcher had been adamant that he wanted Parker on his team. For over an hour, their commander let them argue, but then he'd requested Parker's psych eval and his personnel file to make the final decision. He'd read them in that order and Holleran still remembered the way his commander had gone very pale near the end of the file. Years later, he'd gone just as pale in that same spot – and while he didn't know for sure…

"Yes, Greg, he gave you a chance because of Castor Troy." Holleran stretched out a hand, shaking his head at the budding disappointment. "Greg, your arrest of Castor Troy may have been what got your foot in the door with both Homicide and the SRU, but it was your performance that kept you there."

At the askance expression from his subordinate, Holleran smiled, letting his own sorrow show. "Archer was a legend, but Cragen's never tolerated slackers in his life. You were a good detective and if you'd applied to the SRU before your breakdown, there wouldn't have been any question of your acceptance here."

The stocky man dropped his gaze, pulling in a slow breath. "So Castor helped me get my second chance, huh?"

"If you like," Holleran allowed. "Or you could say that your willingness to sacrifice everything for the good of the city got you a second chance."

A faint smile. "Or I could go back to blaming Artorius Calvin, sir. Figure he got me into rehab; he probably got me in the SRU, too."

Holleran chuckled. "That works, Lieutenant. That works." He tapped the edge of the laptop, stern once more. "Good work tying all the threads together, Greg, but this has never been your fault, understand?" He waited for hazel to widen a hair. "No," Norm insisted, firm. "We may never know what might have been, but I would not trade you for a dozen SRU teams." Not that he thought they ever could've fielded that many teams successfully, but still. When dealing with Parker's guilt complex – and especially his 'Castor Troy' guilt complex – it was best to pull out the big guns without delay.

It took a few more seconds, but then Parker's eyes crinkled, a faint smile tugging at his jaw. "You just don't want to go back to doing all the paperwork, sir."

"Darn right, I don't."

The lieutenant laughed, hazel glittering with wry humor once more. But even as he opened his mouth to speak, his head snapped towards the office door. Holleran stiffened, turning towards the door himself even as someone barged through, so violently that the door bounced off one of the guest chairs.

The new arrival was just a little shorter than Parker and stockier than his lieutenant had ever been, with bright red hair, heavily muscled arms, and wild blue eyes. He wore what looked like a cross between wizard robes and something right out of an outdoorsmen's documentary. Before Holleran could say anything, the man slammed both his palms on Parker's desk, one sleeve bouncing up just high enough to reveal a half-healed shiny burn.

"Tell me you've got the dragon eggs."

Author note: In RL news, I have an editor! She won't be able to start looking at Small Beginnings until May, but that's fine. Also, it will take longer because she proposed Story Coaching instead of a straight developmental edit. That means I will send her 50 pages per month, she will go through them and do her report, and then we will meet after I've had a chance to look her feedback over. There's more to it, of course, but that's the basics.

I am very grateful to the Lord for guiding me to the right editor for Small Beginnings and for this opportunity to basically have a personalized writing course surrounding my book.

Also, for anyone who might have missed it, I posted a oneshot for Resurrection Sunday - Of Fortune Hunters.

Thank you to everyone for reading, for your support, your reviews, and your prayers! I never would have gotten this far in my writing career without your support!