Hi, so again back with this story and I hope you enjoy it, this was one of my favourite episodes and again there was a sense it was rushed. There were so many missing scenes that I simply decided to...add...them.
Hope you enjoy.
For once this is mostly cannon...
Usual warnings on spelling/grammar apply if you've read my works before you'll know.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.
Please Read and Review.
Something Bad Happened
Chapter 2-No Such Fear
Danny battles with his demons...cannot get in touch with his father and knows that he has to make a call he has been dreading. It doesn't help that his brother's double is looking at him like that.
His hands were stained red.
That was the story of Danny Regan's entire life he thought looking at his hands. They were stained red, red with blood, the blood of his enemies perhaps, the blood of innocent people that were caught in the crossfire and more importantly the blood of his family. To be specific his little brother.
Perhaps the worst thing was that this was the second brother who Danny had seen on that gurney.
The only saving grace was that this time Jamie was alive. Or he had been when he had been brought into the place.
He had thought that he'd known about fear when he had signed up but looking at his red hands he thought that there was no such fear as this. This right here, this was the nightmare. And here he was, Danny Reagan stuck in the middle of it playing endless.
What was the saying? Always a bridesmaid, never the bride?
He knew that he had to make a phone call, he knew that nurses and doctors knew cops…how many times did Linda call him when one of his own was in the hospital to let him know…he also knew that Eddie would soon be being told and ideally he did not want her to walk into this uninformed. Command would have to let her know…Danny was certainly not going to put this in a phone call or worse a text message over dispatch but the truth of the matter was that he could not make himself move off the hospital bathroom floor.
His hands were still stained in red. Jamie's blood.
He retched scrambling for the toilet and heaving like he was Jack or Sean coming off their first drink induced binge. He leant his head against the lid as he felt his stomach heave so violently he was sure that he was going to have it come out as well and then before he could even move a hand had come out and flushed, hands were dragging him backwards and someone had from somewhere gotten a towel that was wet and smoothing it down his face like Linda had done when he was having a bad night after the war.
For a moment he allows himself one second of pure delusion that it's his wife and then he opens his eyes and sees that it's Joe Hill sat watching him with eyes too wise to be so young and the wrong shade to be his brother.
That's the issue with Joe he realises, it's the same but it's not phantom pain, a phantom image of the boy he once loved more than he loved himself.
The funny thing was you never realised that you could lose something, something as simplistic as family until you lost them. Grandma. Mom. Joe. Linda.
The list was endless of him.
Joe Hill watched him for a second and then.
"People are arriving. I tried to get a call into 1PP but nobody has seen him"
"What?"
Joe shrugged looking annoyed.
"He's gone on some fact finding thing with the Archbishop apparently. Nobody can find him. It's an open secret. They haven't found Eddie yet cause she's on patrol but…but people talk Danny, I reckon you've got about ten minutes before this place becomes rammed with cops"
He sighed. He had hated it when Joe had died he hated it now.
It took him a second to realise that he had spoken that out loud. He turned his head to look at his nephew who watched him with that even stare as if it was obvious that he had said it out loud.
Or maybe he was going into shock?
"Ya think" Joe muttered and it took Danny a moment to realise that he had said that out loud too. He opened his mouth and then closed it again and Joe scooted closer to him wrapping one arm around him and though he didn't want to there was nothing that he could do, it was like there was a lever pulling him and Danny Reagan the ex marine, the cop, the brother, the father, the husband and the rest of it put his head on the shoulder of his nephew and let the tears fall.
He did this for ten seconds until his breathing got under control. He was fairly adapt at understanding his body now, he had been a Marine in combat who had seen it all (and yes he knew that was a board generalisation but let me assure you he really had seen it all) and he had been married to a nurse. He knew how to clam himself down and so eventually he pulled back and wiped a hand over his face.
"Sorry" he said finally.
"Don't be daft" Joe said easily. "It happens to the best of us right?"
God did the kid have to sound like his Dad too?
"So why do you hate it when the cops pile in?" Joe asked and Danny realised that he had gone back to asking questions as if the questions being asked could calm him down. He was probably right Joe had the look of a cop who went to all the training refresher courses and was not the kind who slept in on them like Danny did.
"They did it with Joe" he said quietly. "And it was the most pointless thing I had ever seen, cops weeping and hugging and crying and offering condolences and all I wanted to do was scream at them to get away because half of them were only there to suck up to the two Commissioner's. His fucking funeral was a song and dance too, everyone had to be there, press, officials all of it, it was just…a whirlwind of smiling and greeting and shaking hands and all I wanted to do was break the next one because it wasn't what my brother had wanted. Christ not even the fucking reading was—" he stopped himself suddenly.
To go down the road of how angry he had been after Joe was to admit that he might go down that road again and he was not sure that he was ever going to be able to do that. He did not want to ever feel that helpless again and yet here he was face down in a hospital bathroom with the gates about to open and so he dragged himself to his feet and tried very hard not to look at the kid who reminded him so much of what he had lost and who was not enough to staunch the ache of the stiches that had just healed that his bitch of a mother had ripped open for nothing short of self serving reasons.
Christ he hated Castio right now for shooting Jamie but he really hated Paula Hill. The damage that woman had inflicted on her son, on his brother, on them…for ten dollars he'd ram her with his car right now.
He looked Paula Hill's son in the face and knew that he had to lie.
"I need to go out and handle it" he said finally. "Do you know who is going to call Eddie?"
"Watch commander for her that's McNicholas. They won't put it out on dispatch while she's in the field and that gives us some time but the truth is that sooner or later she's gonna know and once they know everyone else is gonna be here, so who do you wanna call?"
He didn't know he stood up shaking and he didn't…
But he did.
There was one person he knew who could cut through the bull of this while he fell apart and who would stand in front of him shielding the blows while he did it.
One person.
The only one left.
"Where's Maria?"
"Outside, she wanted to come in but I thought you wouldn't…who do you want her to call?"
"Erin. I…I'll call Dad. You need to call Pops"
Joe nodded looking thoroughly relieved that he had something to do.
"And your boys? Nikki?"
"Erin can call Nikki. And…and I will call my boys you understand me? Nobody is calling my boys but me"
He needed to do that himself. Sean would get a lift here he was sure but he needed to make sure that Jack didn't get home from school and look on the news and see that some cop had been shot or worse…that the second son of the Police Commissioner was…
But he stopped thinking that, he couldn't…he couldn't…allow himself to think like that.
He staggered to the door Joe watching him with an odd expression as if he was the victim of a car accident and then he straightened his shoulders and left Danny the terrified angry brother in the bathroom and he became Detective Reagan the cop once more.
Please don't die Jamie, please don't die.
The phone kept ringing and Danny gnashed his teeth together.
Please don't die Jamie, please don't die.
He nearly threw the fucking thing into the wall but Joe was watching him again. The kid had called his grandfather it seemed but in terms of calling his own father that was getting to be a minor miracle.
Please don't die Jamie, please don't die.
"Dad" he snapped into the phone when once more it hit message. "I don't care if the Archbishop is personally conducting a séance to reunite you and Mom I swear to the ALMIGHTY if you don't get here right now I am going to put this phone though a wall and then start shooting because I am not gonna go through this again. SO GET HERE. NOW!"
And with that he hung up and dialled Baker's number.
She to her credit picked up on the first ring.
"I still haven't found him Danny, Garrett, Sid and I are in the car trying to find the detail"
"What the fuck has he been doing?"
There was a delicate pause and then.
"He's been having a crisis of faith recently—"
"Oh for fuck's sake! Jamie is on a hospital bed being prepped for surgery Baker he has to be here he—" he trailed off and swallowed down the tears that were once again threatening to take hold of him, twisting in his grip and only when he was sure that he could speak again did he next try.
"Baker he has be here, I can't…I cannot be the one that makes the decisions here, we cannot have a repeat of Joe do you understand me? I don't care if the Archbishop and him are dancing naked around the foundation of youth I need him here, I need MY DAD. JAMIE NEEDS HIS DAD"
There was a pause at that rather random declaration and this time he knew that both Joe and Maria were watching him. Maria with kinder eyes than Joe who was watching him the way his father would sometimes watch him when he thought that Danny had gone round the bend.
"Danny I am on my way to what he said would be his last location and Garrett is on the phone with the Archdiocese whatever happens we are going to find him, Sid is driving which means we are breaking a good twenty speeding laws in the process so we are going to get him and come to the hospital. I promise you Danny if I have to hook him in with the heel of my shoe I am going to get him too you"
He nodded and then hung up uncaring that she wouldn't see him.
Abigail Baker he thought at random looking at the doors they had taken his brother through, should be running for President. Danny would pay good money to watch her smack Putin around with her shoe.
He looked at Maria who had straightened up to her full height.
"Eddie's on her way in and Erin's been informed. Henry too. You want to call the boys?"
He nodded taking his phone. If he was calling people then he wasn't thinking about what had happened today, if he had the phone pressed to his ear then he couldn't see the blood.
Sean's phone rang once.
"Dad?"
"Son"
"Dad?"
He knew. Sean knew. Out of both of them he knew that Sean would know.
"Son"
"Dad I'll call Jack, I will you've…Christ who is it?"
"It's err…"
"Daddy?"
It was that little word the moniker that Sean had used when his mother had died and Danny had, had to break the news then to his two boys that their mother was not coming back, that moniker that smacked him back into reality.
He took a deep breathe and closed his eyes against the memory of Jamie's broken body intermingling with Joe's and then.
"Something bad happened son, it's your Uncle Jamie…and something bad has happened"
And there you go, I hope you enjoy, see you next time.
Next Chapter-Eddie gets the phone call that every cops wife dreads.