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Stranger from Afar:
While Mike left for his Appartment, I kept going through the files of our two cases, one which was handled by our team in Homicide, the other SVU.
Alexandra Cabbot said she was having insomnia and couldn't make it to the hearing of one of her cases, I said I would gladly cover for her this time. It was no problem, I told myself, as Mike would say once to Jack: I live to serve. Of course Mike lieved to serve not Jack, God or me, in Mike's world there was only one person he served: himself.
I thought there might be some connection with both cases in Homicide and SVU department, but as I shuffled through both case files I found nothing. Zero, zip, no fingerprints, no clues that could lead us to the whereabouts of the perp. If this was one perp, my mind boggled. How was it possible one person alone could do all of this and drive the people of NY crazy? There had to be reason he had for doing all of these heinous crimes?
Her father, another man with the ego as big as the US like Mike, had told her that criminals didn't need to have a especial reason when commiting a crime; pretty much everything about them was motivated by their killer instinct after many years of repressing them. "When you cage the beast, the beast gets angry" he would tell her. This meant that whoever or whatever was out there, he was a lunatic who didn't live in the same world as normal people. Perp's reality was one of lunacy, where the rules of the law didn't apply.
How could they catch him then? I thought.
Some twenty years before when I thought life was absolute, there was no gray side, there was only good and evil, right and wrong. When you are a kid everything is so easy, God is in his heaven, he is up there watching over us, and if you do something good as my mother used to say, he would reward you in the afterlife with Heaven. What I would give to have that again.
Scrubbing my eyes, I tell myself this is not the time to think about the past or your feelings Connie! Focus on finding this perp, if Mike and Alex can't is your turn, my turn to outshine them.
There was trouble again, after I took the case files and drove to my appartment, when I openned by bedroom door and saw my lonely bed another flashback came to me:
This was different, there was no crowned Queen, only a King.
There was only she, and she was perfect. Katherine of Aragon sat on a throne made of mock gold, on top of her head rested beautiful white flowers, symbol of her virginity and the purity of her soul untouched by evil. With a great smile that she sent to her new husband, newly crowned King Henry the Eight, she said to him in a sure voice "Now I am Katherine"
"You will no longer be Catalina?" Asked the young seventeen year old boy, Connie took a closer look at the boy, she was shocked by his beautiful sky blue eyes, eyes that looked familiar.
"No, from now on Your Majesty, you and I will forge an Empire and I will be hailed as Queen Katherine as you will be hailed as the greatest man in all Europe"
'Man' at the sound of that word Connie could see the young man's eyes beginning to lit up. His ego big as his smile, he leaned towards his soon to be Queen and kissed her without any restraint openly in public.
Moments later this woman whose hair was black as night, lips as red as blood and everything that made story of Snow White seem like something real and not something out of Brothers Grimm's morbid imagination; was crowned Queen Katherine, Consort of Henry VIII of England.
All her dreams and hopes for the future now seemed secure, nothing Connie sensed coming from this woman's security, could possibly go wrong.
She didn't know why but she felt pity for this doomed Queen, like Anne Boleyn she was very sure of herself. She thought she was greater than everybody else, nobody could defy her, after all she was the trophy wife of Henry, the most celebrated monarch in all Europe.
How wrong she was, how wrong she and her successor were. Connie could tell just by his looks that his ego was apeaced as soon as he got what he wanted, he loved the chase, he was a hunter and after his thrist for blood was satisfied and his prey devoured, he would go looking for his next meal.
That was how men like Henry were.
She understood why women as intelligent as his first two Queens would fall for him, but in the end of the ceremony Connie began understanding the true reason behind Henry's appeal to the intellectual women. Henry was King, these women were ambitious, sadistic, machiavellous, intellectuals and highly cunning, but these women despite their ambition were also idealist. The ideals couldn't be carried out by women during the time at the start of the Reformation, they had to be through men's financial power and their authorities. Katherine and Anne thought they could get what they wanted marrying Henry, but in doing so, Connie thought, they lost more than what they'd sold their souls for.
Connie said to the 'visions' that it was enough.
I openned my eyes and glanced at my appartment. Everything appeared normal, there was no people around me speaking in Latin or Spanish. No pageants, no exotic dresses or masks, no Henry. I was back.
I was to remain stuck in these strange visions, whatever they meant I thought they must be linked somehow with the murders.
Cyrus Lupo had told me had felt something when he touched the ring, he said it was like recognition. But that is impossible, nobody had touched that ring (if it belonged who I suspected) in more than four hundred and fifty years. How could Lupo ... But then I stop, I remember Mike, Cabbot and half of the people involved in the two murder cases have told me before they had been having these dreams, these visions of themselves being in alternate realities.
Alex told me one week ago while she was with the Forensic team and Dr. Huang the SVU shrink, that she thought she heard someone whispering behind her the name "Regina". Huang explained it was the stress and the recent events that had followed Elliot's son's funeral. That could be true for the SVU team but for us in the Homicide Department, that explanation didn't satisfy me.
We hadn't known Detective Stabler's son or never been close to him or Alex, not the Detectives or Mike who seemed to be more affected by their Insomnia at least.
There was something here, an invisible force acting with a mind of its own. Evil, it was ridiculous but right now everything about this case seemed ridiculous.
Ring, Ring, Ring.
I picked up the phone next to my bed, I was about ready to lie down. "Yes, hello?"
"Alex?"
"What ..."
"Slow down, please what did you say?"
Alex Cabbot was breathing rapidly, I could sense there was panic and distress in her voice.
"Alex be clear, what happened?" I cried and waited for Alex to give me her answer.
After seconds of waiting she finally replied. I nearly dropped to the ground. No, it couldn't be, no.
"Connie! Connie!"
"Yes. I am here" I reply slowly, trying to think clearly but I can't. My hand in my mouth so Alex can't hear my sobs I reassure her I will meet her in St. Jerome's Hospital if I can avoid traffic in half an hour.
Grabbing my coat and putting my globes on, I rush out of my appartment and head for my car.
Driving within the limits to avoid a traffic ticket, I try not to think about an injured McCoy. Jack is strong I know he can pull out of this one, he has escape death many times, it has always been the case of him worrying about Mike and me getting intro trouble.
Connie, Connie, I could hear the strange voice at the back of my head, it scared me because I knew for a fact it wasn't my conscience. It was that strange hissing voice again that I always heard before I saw my visions.
I had not time for it.
I had to get to Jack.
A/N: Short chapter, but there is a reason why I made this interlude, Connie's POV will become very important for the rest of the plot, she isn't *spoilers ahead, if you don't like give your review at once and don't read after this sentece!* one of the reborn souls but her role is just as important for bringing everybody. Next chapter: Cabbot has a vision of her past life discovering her true identity and we find out about Katherine (of Aragon).