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Something Bad Happened

Chapter 7-No Such Thing As A Sure Thing

Jamie knows that he is dead...or dying...or...well...nothing good...and then he gets a visit from someone totally unexpected but whose advice he needs more than anything.

Jamie knows that he is dead...or dying...or...well...nothing good...

He knows he's been shot. He knows that he is in trouble.

He knows that because he cannot think of any other way why he is standing at the window in his father's office looking at the two towers that he was absolutely sure had been knocked down when he was a teenager.

"Well it's a view that doesn't get old...until it does" came a drawling voice.

He knew that voice intimately well.

And that was how he knew that he was in trouble.

He turned around and looked to see his brother, his very, very dead brother sitting there at his father's desk boots up on the wood in a way that would get him a swift clip round the ear if he'd had tried that in real life.

For a second the two of them just stared at the other and then Joe's face creased into that wide loveable smile that he had always spared and shared with Jamie. The one that it didn't matter what time of night he had called he would be there. Jamie smiled back and felt his heart heave with love even as his eyes watered.

Joe was here.

Joe was back.

Of course that meant he was dead...didn't it?

"No of course it doesn't mean your dead you stupid nitwit" Joe said casually and it took Jamie a second to realise that he had said it out loud. Joe shrugged and sighed in equal measure and threw his legs off the desk, spun around on the chair and then stood up. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out the window. Jamie stared at him. He didn't think he wouldn't not stare at Joe...at a Joe who was whole and healthy and very much alive.

He had been at school when he had gotten the call. Had waited two weeks before Danny had shown up to literally drag him back, had been unable to leave his room and had not wanted to. Harvard had been better then as it was now in terms of accepting him as the son of the police commissioner but the truth was for everyone who wanted to pay their respects to him there was another one who said good riddance to bad rubbish and another one who just wanted to stare at him, get close to get his five minutes of fame.

So he had locked himself in his room and his roommate had been kind enough to keep him fed and hydrated and to get him his schoolwork. Callum had said nothing back then...had simply let him grieve and had shoved instant ramen down him and that had been the end of that. Then Danny had shown up and dragged him into the shower, had climbed into the shower with him and held him while he vomited and sobbed and then had put him to bed, when he had been able to come home he had come home and even then he had not seen Joe in the coffin, the entire family had gone but Jamie and even now when ever anyone asked he did not regret that decision. It was like the decision to become a cop. He knew that it was the right one back then as he did now nearly thirteen years down the line.

Had it really been thirteen years since Joe died? Sometimes it felt like yesterday it really did. It could not have been thirteen years he thought looking into his brother's smiling face, since he had seen his brother's smile.

Joe turned to look at him.

"How are the Towers still—"

"Because this is a world where people still work in them."

"So this is heaven or?"

"No...this is where you decide I think"

"Decide?"

"Jamie you're at what we call a crossroads. So to speak. And you have a choice, so you get to stand here and look at the world beyond this glass...be glad you got up here didn't you?"

Jamie stared at him. He didn't get it. Maybe it showed on his face because Joe smiled at him gently.

"Jamie you get a choice, a choice between weather or not you stay, you know I didn't get that, I just went straight to beyond the fourteenth floor, but you...you get to decide if you are going down and therefore back to the world you came from or up with me. I am just the guy who talks you through it...or well...one of the guys. I won't stay here for all of it, there are some other things that have to be sorted but..."

He trailed off sighed and looked out at the window. His Pa had a good view Jamie thought, he had been away when he had taken the top job, had not seen the view until he had come home and by that point the Towers had gone, his father had been in the job for about six weeks when that had happened. He could still remember it like it was yesterday, he doubted any New Yorker could forget that day if they could remember it. For all that America and the world remembered he truly believed that to call yourself a New Yorker you had to have been there. He had never seen such an outpouring of love and support in all his life, in two decades it seemed all of that had been forgotten and the cops that had been the heroes and given whatever they had wanted had become the bad guys once more and there was nothing that they could do to stop it.

Sometimes...social media was a thing that he truly believed had been invented by the devil on one of his mean days.

He sighed and looked around.

"I don't know what I want to do" he said finally.

"Well...that's the shock talking. Come on Jamie take a seat, we can talk it through"

He smiled at Joe.

And Joe smiled back.

As it turns out when you were in heaven or hell or whatever bizzarro in-between this office was you couldn't get drunk. Therefore Joe cracked open a bottle of scotch and then to Jamie's absolute amazement cracked open a joint.

"Really?"

"Hey...Mom isn't here and it's not like I can get stoned. Believe me I spent the first week I was up in..." he pointed upwards and Jamie followed his gaze even as he continued. "And I did everything, just to see if I could. Nothing happens"

Jamie didn't know what to make of that.

He looked down at his hands.

Joe lit the joint with what Jamie knew was his emergency lighter. Joe had been a social smoker and only when he knew that their Dad would not find out. It had been their little secret, the rebellion through and through. Though looking back he suspected Danny had more than often partook.

Joe took a breath and then.

"So..."

"So what?"

"Balls in your court kiddo. It's up to you what you want to do right about now. Like I said you've got a choice."

"I don't know as if I want a choice"

"Oh believe me you do" Joe said darkly. "I never had one and I regret that every day."

There was an awkward pause and then.

"Joe you do know that you have a son right?"

"Oh yeah. Fucking Paula, a weeks shag that lasted a week too long looking back"

"Joe!"

Joe shot him an unamused look and then sighed.

"We were sex Jamie, sex pure and simple. Maybe she wanted more but believe me she was not getting it from me so all this crap about how if she'd have told me I would have offered to marry her is just that, I wasn't in the market for anything from her other than what we had, and to be honest with you and I say this with as much respect as I can what I had wasn't the best. She was too intense for me at a time where I was trying to figure out a lot of shit. I don't know what Mom and Dad would have done but if she'd have told me back then expecting a white dress and a ring and a date at the Plaza she was not going to get it"

Jamie had an image of that in his head. He felt like he knew what his Mom would have said, his Mom had been an old soul in a young body, she didn't like to believe sex before marriage existed. She would have pushed and prodded Joe to marry Paula and if Joe was right and he'd have said no it would have been a headache for all of them.

He didn't think his Mom would approve of the games Sidney and he used to play when they were engaged (not married) with his department issued handcuffs.

Come to think of it he was pretty sure that his father wouldn't either...though for a very different reason.

He sighed and took a sip of his scotch and then downed it in one. Magically almost it refilled itself.

Joe smiled.

"I regret her not telling me" he said finally. "But if I am being honest the whole thing with Paula reeks of something...she kept my son from me, from you, from everyone until she needed a favour, let him become a cop and then dropped that bomb on him...nah I ain't buying it. Watch her Jamie...cause she uses people and given half the chance she will use this family for her own gains. Joe on the other hand..." he shot Jamie an amused look.

"Driving you mad huh?"

"He's not you" Jamie said simply.

Joe nodded.

"He's not supposed to be me" he said quietly. "Just cause he looks like me doesn't mean he's supposed to be me. Guess the kid's having a hard time with that huh?" it was said with a tinge of wistfulness and Jamie had never hated Paula Hill more for what she had taken from his brother.

"He found out the reason his Dad wasn't around was because he was killed" Jamies said quietly. "And then I got gunned down right in front of him and—Danny..." he trailed off and Joe nodded. Unspoken between the two of them was that Danny would be the one who took this the hardest. Danny who had buried one little brother and now was in the process of probably going to bury another. Danny who was still broken from Joe, still destroyed over Linda. Jamie...well...he wouldn't say his death would be the reason Danny ate his gun but he could quite easily see him sinking to the floor and never getting up again.

Yes...he could quite easily see that.

There was a pause and then...

"Danny and I...after you...it took us a long time to get back to where we are now. Cause you and I were best friends and Danny and you were best friends and Danny and I were just brothers"

"Bullshit" Joe calls quietly. "You and Danny were more than brothers. Danny loves you a hell of a lot more than he loves me, you were the baby brother that he always wanted to protect, trust me Jamie you drive him mad but he'd rather go back to the war than lose you. Regardless of weather or not he lost me first"

Jamie didn't get it.

"Don't try and think it out" Joe said putting his feet back up on the coffee table. "You made a decision?"

"No"

Joe looked at his watch and tilted his head to the side for a second like he used to do when he was helping Jamie out with a difficult math problem when they were children and they had homework.

"Don't worry" he said quietly looking back up at Jamie. "You've got some time yet"

And there you go!

Next Chapter-Jamie has some conversations

Part 1.