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 4-This Is Not Your Heaven
The one we've all been waiting for...AKA. Frank finds out.
He's not had his phone on in Church. Call him old fashioned but there are still some rules even his team know about. Besides…he's done this undercover for a reason (and he is going to have to get his entire security detail a present for this because he can feel the disapproval from here) and so he misses it until he steps out and breathes in the cold fresh air coming off the harbour.
He likes it. He can walk up and down the street with no detail and he finds he likes it. Even when he's in his jeans and boots like this he usually has a detail and there are two many camera's in the way for him to truly enjoy himself and his own company. When he took the job that was one of the things that he had never thought that he had missed and now he had.
Funny…the little things.
Frank thinks he might spend the afternoon off. He knows that he's not ready for retirement…he likes to work for a living always had and he knows that he has a mountain of paperwork back at the office so why not? If he turns his phone on, opens a bar tab for his detail, sends Garrett a bottle of scotch and Sid some imported beer by the case and books Abigail into that restaurant that serves six courses of mouthfuls that she wants he might get his team to leave him alone for the afternoon.
He might take in a movie…he's, not done that in a while.
Frank sighs and flips on his phone sighing. It's not long before it begins to light up and he sighs seeing the voice messages.
It's been a good day, today has been one of those days where genuinely it feels like he is putting the world to rights and he wants to keep it there. He wants to be able to keep doing it, wants to be able to go back to the basics…
He stares down at his phone and then frowns.
Seven calls from Baker.
Fourteen from his father.
Nine from Garrett.
Ten from Erin.
Eight from Sid.
Four from Joe…who never called and had to be prodded and poked into taking his number and…
TWENTY FOUR from Danny?
Danny? Twenty four phone calls…Danny hadn't called twenty four times when he was in Iraq he was certainly not going to start now.
He read down the list again seeing messages pop open from Joe and Danny, Sean, Jack…hell even Nikki had sent one. He watched it for a second as his phone came back to life and knew…
He knew something was wrong here, something was terribly, terribly wrong here…even if he had not been a cop for his whole life, had been raised by a cop his whole life and had a grandson and three sons who at some point had all worn the uniform (to say nothing of the new daughter in law) he would have known that something here was terribly, terribly wrong.
He hovered over one of the messages from Danny…Danny was to the point and by the book and he knew that those messages would contain the truth of what had happened today but he also knew that those messages would also have the power to take him to his knees.
So instead he called Garrett.
Garrett answered on the first ring.
"Where the fuck are you?"
Thirteen years of working with Garrett Moore allowed him some liberties that many another officer did not have the luxury off Frank thought…this was one of those moments…
And besides…he knew Garrett. That tone and that language could only mean one thing.
Something terribly bad had happened…and he had been nowhere around.
Frank had always been a pragmatic man…he knew what this meant…he knew it.
"What's happened?"
"Hang on we've got your location were coming to meet you and—Wow"
"What?"
"Nothing just…don't ever let Abigail drive you anywhere GOOD LORD WOMAN THAT WAS CLOSE!"
"What happened?"
There was a sign and then.
"Wait until were there Frank and I will…
"TELL ME NOW"
He didn't need to shout for Garrett to know by the tone of his voice that he had to tell him. Frank had not become the Commissioner of the most manic and largest police force in the country by shouting and screaming the odds. He had raised four children and lived with his father…he had perfected the use of the tone that personified swift, silent and deadly.
Any other time he would be rather proud of it.
There was a pause and then.
"It's Jamie"
He didn't drop the phone but it came close to slipping out of his hand anyway.
He had known it…
He had known it…
He had known it not from some deep emotional pull…there had not been some great cosmic balance in the sky that had led to this but rather the common place detective skills that he had when he looked down at the phone and noticed that he'd had messages from all of his family except for Eddie and Jamie…that had been clue enough that something bad had happened to those two and God help him in the ten seconds it had taken for Garett to impart that news he had hoped with every fibre of his being that it had been Eddie.
Losing a daughter in law was hell he had felt that when he had lost Linda…but the reality was he could cope with that. The chances of him surviving the burial of another of his children was an entirely different thing altogether.
For a moment Garrett was silent as if he had known that Frank had needed a moment to steel himself to ask the question.
"Like…Like…" he couldn't get the words out.
Fortunately Garrett knew him well enough to get what he was going at.
"I don't know" he said and his voice was coming a long way away and was oddly gentle to boot. "I don't know Frank I don't…I…the intel is sketchy. From what I understand it was a—TURN RIGHT ABIGAIL—a bust gone wrong and he got one to the chest and the other to the back, he was conscious when he was rolled into St Vic's and they've had him in surgery ever since—"
"Does—"
"Family knows. Danny was with him and that Joe Hill kid"
Frank closed his eyes. If there was one person who would understand even a fraction of what he was going through right now it was Danny…
Danny…
Danny had been the first one there when he'd gotten word of Joe. He had not gone to the crime scene he had gone straight to the hospital and it had been Danny sat on the floor small and oddly diminished that had told Frank what he had refused to believe when he had turned up. Danny with that odd shattered look on his face, the disbelief that had grown when he had arrived as if it had occurred to Danny there and then that his brother was dead and that he had to be the one who had to tell the family and that this family was his own.
Danny who had gone for a walk the morning after and Linda who had rang him in a blind panic because she had not known where he was and what he was doing and so on little sleep and more grief than he had known possible Frank had found his son sat in the graveyard with a bottle of whiskey looking at where his brother was going to go and completely incoherent.
He knew Danny…Danny was so integral to him, so much a part of him (as were all his other children) that he knew him. Danny was the one child for all his gripes that was the most like him and he knew that the thought of losing another brother was going to send Danny face down into the dirt never to rise again.
And Joe…well…God only knows what this was doing to Joe. God knows the kid had been traumatised enough this year without this adding to the mess.
From the day he had first accepted the position of Police Commissioner of New York City, Frank had known there would be a hell of a balance to strike, and with the years post that he had learnt that there was a hell of a balance to pay.
He had never thought that the price would be two of his children.
His knees turned to jelly and he dropped the phone.
Jamie…
Christ Jamie had not even wanted to be a cop in the beginning. Frank had known what he was doing, he had done it for them, had done it in his twisted way to make things better and Frank if he'd been a better man would have stopped it when Sidney had asked him too all those years ago.
But now…
He had never thought…even when Vinny had been killed ten years ago he had never thought that this would happen to Jamie, even with one son buried in the ground he had always worked under the assumption that the other two were strong enough to dodge bullets…hell Danny had…
He looked down at his hands and saw that they had become blurred shaking messes.
Please he prayed outside the church to a God he didn't think he could believe in if He took of his sons, Please don't take another one. Please I cannot lose another one, please don't take another one of my sons, don't take another one of my babies please.
There was the sound of tires skidding down the street in a move that Frank knew was surely illegal and then Abigail Baker had rammed the car to a stop in front of him and then with an agile speed that a woman with two children in a pencil skirt and heels should have she kicked open the door and climbed into the back to allow him to slip in and his detail to start driving. He climbed in almost methodically and before he could even ask Sid started to rattle off information that was going over his head and not sinking it.
It was like with his Pops and his heart attack at Thanksgiving…he should have known then the answers to the doctor's questions but he had known but he had not been able to get his brain to work.
Garrett reached out and took his hand and then shook his head at Sid who stopped talking.
"He's in surgery Frank" he said and his voice was coming a long way away. "You need to breathe, because right now your Dad is holding together your other children by a string. Eddie is there she's been told and she needs you and God only knows what your grandson is thinking. We are going to get you to the hospital and we are going to get you to Jamie but until then you need to breathe"
His voice was oddly gentle and Frank nodded and took one breath and then another. Only with these people would he show such vulnerability and he turned to look out the window as New York sped by with a speed that was almost sickening.
"Frank." Garrett's voice was desperate, and Frank was grateful that he couldn't see his deputy commissioner's eyes. "He's going to be okay."
Frank closed his own.
I can't lose another son. God, I can't lose another son.
"Frank?" Garrett said, his voice heavy with concern.
He turned his head a little. Everything felt half a step slow, and his heart was a stone, barely thumping in his chest. "I..." He swallowed. "I need to call Danny."
"I can do that for you."
"No." He had to do this. "I need to do it."
"He's already there Frank" Sid said and he noticed that both of them had dropped his title. "I know Danny of old, he's not gonna go anywhere until your there and he knows…"
He trailed off and Frank knew what he was going to say even though he had stopped himself from saying it.
Until he knows if Jamie is going to survive.
OH GOD.
The thought of…it made him want to die himself.
I can't lose another son. God, I can't lose another son.
Please I cannot lose another one, please don't take another one of my sons, don't take another one of my babies please.
It was his last coherent thought that he remembered having.
And there you go, hope you enjoy, work is insane a bit now so I don't know when I will next update but I am hopeful it will be soon.
Next Chapter-Eddie is asked does she want a priest, and that is when Erin calls her ex-husband...Henry tries to keep it together and Joe in the corner doesn't know what to do.