Topic: My Bloody Valentine

Desmond Granger

Date: 2013-02-14 22:13 EST
It was Valentine's Day, and Desmond was trying to finish up at the office, so he could keep his promise and meet Piper for dinner. He'd recently given his two weeks' notice at work, but leaving the D.A.'s office in the midst of a big case was easier said than done. It was going on three weeks already, and despite his promise to Piper and Lyneth that they'd be a family, he was having trouble breaking away. There was just too much responsibility, too many details, too many loose ends to tie up before he could get away. They'd done their best to talk him into staying, telling him he was making a huge mistake, throwing away a promising career for what? A woman' Was he out of his mind" Why couldn't she move to New York" What was the big deal" As much as they'd tried, Des had stuck to his guns. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted wasn't in New York. Not anymore.

A million miles and a heartbeat away, an excited little girl was helping her mother put on the last lick of make up and grab her coat, cheerfully informing her that she didn't have to come home tonight at all. Piper laughed as she slipped from the house - Des had called earlier to say he was unlikely to get away from the office when he had thought he would, and would she mind meeting him at the restaurant instead" Of course she didn't mind, and with Kaylee at home already, wrapped up with Lyneth, there was no need to linger. It was Valentine's Day, as Lynnie had taken great pains to tell her mother, and the tiny girl didn't want any "kissin' or cuddles" to interrupt her chance to spend the evening with her silly Auntie Kaylee.

In the weeks since he'd decided to move to Rhy'Din, an innocent had been attacked by Nicoletti's thugs complicating matters further. He knew they were trying to send a message, trying to scare people into dropping the case, but Des didn't scare that easy. That wasn't why he was leaving, and it had only made him dig his heels in all the more while he was still in New York, working tirelessly to put together an ironclad case, with the objective of toppling the biggest, most powerful crime family New York had known in decades. It was the part of his job he loved most, and he reveled in it. He'd reluctantly agreed to stay a few weeks more, just long enough to make sure everything went according to plan. He was finally on the verge of cutting a deal with Sam Nicoletti that would blow the case apart and put his father away for good. Everything was going according to plan, or so Des thought. But as everyone knows, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and it was Valentine's Day when it all came to a head.

Left alone with Kaylee and Loki, and promised the prospect of having Des at home for a long weekend, Lyneth settled happily into her evening routine, curled up against Kaylee on the couch to watch Beauty and the Beast. She seemed completely engrossed in the movie, and yet some part of her had wandered elsewhere, a part of her no adult had yet to reconcile with the tiny child she appeared to be. It was the part that had bonded itself to her mother, and to the faery folk who lived in their home, the little people who had skipped through the portals earlier that day to keep a close eye on a certain prosecutor and be certain he was not going to cause any disappointments tonight.

Des had suspected for weeks that something was very wrong in the District Attorney's office, but he hadn't quite put his finger on who was the culprit. There were only a few people who had access to the case files, only a few people who knew the particulars, and it had become increasingly obvious to him over the last few weeks that someone in the D.A.'s office was not what they seemed, someone right under his nose. He wasn't quite sure who it was, but before he left Manhattan for good, he was determined to find out. He'd stayed late at the office that Valentine's Day digging into anything he could get his hands on, any small clue that would lead him to the guilty party. As it turned out, he wouldn't have to bother. The guilty party came to him.

Satisfied that the two most important people in her life were where they should be, tiny Lyneth turned her attention back to the T.V. screen, giggling with her Auntie happily over the antics of animated clocks and teapots as she cuddled in close. Mummy was happy, Des would be home soon, and Lyneth had an evening of fun ahead of her. All was right with the little half-Fae's world.

Glancing at his watch, Des frowned. It was half past six, and he'd promised to meet Piper at the restaurant by seven. He hadn't had a chance to clean up yet, and he still had to make his way through the portal and to the restaurant. Thankfully, he'd already packed an overnight bag, but in the end, it wouldn't matter. He wouldn't have a chance to take it with him. He debated calling her again, putting off their date until the weekend. He'd been stupid to agree to meeting her during the week, but at the time, he hadn't expected to get tied up at the office.

Torn between his personal and professional life, he sighed, deciding work could wait another few days, and gathered up his papers, stowing them in a locked filing cabinet for safe keeping. He had no reason to suspect anything would go wrong. No one knew what he was digging into, no one but the office mole. He went about his usual routine, slinging his coat on over his shoulders, turning the lights out in his office, and taking up his briefcase and overnight bag before heading out. His heels clicked on the marble floor as he made his way down the empty hallway to the elevator, punching the button for the lobby. He was anxious to be gone. This case was going to be the death of him, he thought, unaware of the irony of that particular thought.

Something didn't feel right tonight. Lyneth lay cuddled close in Kaylee's lap, trying to ignore the vague sense of unease that was coiling through her. It was almost as though the little girl was nervous about something, agitated with the prospect of some unknown darkness that was slowly but surely creeping into her senses. Even white chocolate popcorn wasn't cheering her up, though she knew still that nothing was wrong. Piper was at the restaurant, waiting patiently for her date. And the date? Lyneth's small mouth curved into a happier smile as she took a peek through a little friend's eyes. Des was on his way. Finally.

Distracted by his worries about the case and anxious to be keep his promise to Piper, Des didn't notice the trio of footsteps that followed him at a short distance as he made his way from the office into the streets of New York. The portal was a short walk, and it was a crisp night for walking, a clear sky overhead with a pattern of familiar stars, the man in the moon laughing down at him. He made a mental note to pick up some violets in the market before he met Piper at the restaurant, quickening his steps in anticipation of seeing her again and putting all his worries behind him, at least for a little while. He hadn't even started to tell her about the case, not wanting to worry her, trying to keep his personal and professional lives separate was it was all starting to wear on him.

Two more weeks, he promised himself. That was all they were getting out of him. He'd given them enough. It was time someone else stepped up to the plate. He was nearly there, nearly free when the trio took him by surprise, waiting until he was alone and there was no one there to witness but the alley cats and the drunks. Though Des was no slouch in a fight, he was outnumbered three to one, dragged into an empty alley and shoved up against a wall. The trio of men didn't waste any time. There was no time to waste. They weren't stupid, and they didn't want to be caught.

Desmond Granger

Date: 2013-02-14 22:17 EST
Punches were thrown, hard enough to knock Des onto the ground, his head spinning. He lost hold of his briefcase and overnight bag, a voice hissing into his ear, as he was roughly grabbed by the collar and pulled to his feet.

"No one screws with Marco Nicoletti and gets away with it. No one." The voice sounded muffled, as if from far away, but somehow Des realized it was only because his head was ringing from the fist that had exploded against his head.

"F*ck you," Des spat, unable to do much else as his arms were pinned behind his back.

Faces swam in his field of vision, one of them familiar among the others, but before he could utter another word or think another thought, one of them sucker punched him in the gut and he doubled over in pain. "Not such a hotshot now, are you, Granger?"

There was that voice again. He knew that voice. He just needed a minute to think. "What do you want?" Des gasped, every word agony, just buying himself some time.

"....do you want?" The echo rang in Lyneth's ears, and quite suddenly the tiny half-Fae knew where her sense of unease had come from. She could feel the friends she had sent to look after Des panicking in their own way - though they could exist in his world, only those who knew they were there could see them, only those who acknowledged their existence would feel their attempts to protect their fae-child's favorite human male. She sat bolt upright, startling Kaylee in the process.

"What is it, baby girl" You forget you need to pee?" the young woman asked, gently stroking Lyneth's long hair out of her wide turquoise eyes.

Offered an excuse to leave the room, the tiny girl nodded violently, slipping down from Kaylee's lap and running as fast as she could up the stairs. Something was happening to Des, something had to be stopped ....but who would pay any attention to tiny little girl"

"You....off the case and out of the way," came the reply.

Despite the pain, Des felt rage flare inside him, and he clenched his jaw as he came up with fists flying. Somehow, he managed to connect with someone's jaw, before he was beat down again, two men holding him fast by each arm, while the third stood at a safe distance now, wiping blood from his own mouth.

"Think you're so smart," the man snarled as he drew a switchblade and flicked it open. "Not so smart now, are you?" he continued as he stepped forward and thrust the blade into Desmond's abdomen, shoving it as deep as it would go and twisting it cruelly to do the most damage. "Let's see what the city thinks of their golden boy now," he sneered as he tugged the knife from the lawyer's flesh, dripping blood.

Des gasped in agony, pain like fire tearing through his middle. The world seemed to spin and whirl for a moment, like he was going through the portal, only he knew he wasn't. He hadn't made it that far. The men let go of him and he collapsed onto the filthy pavement, clutching his middle in a meager effort to keep himself from bleeding out. As if to add insult to injury, he felt a kick in his side, and he sucked in a breath, ribs cracking beneath the violent force of the impact.

"You want me to finish him?" Another voice asked.

"No, let him die slow. Make an example of him," came the reply.

Des felt someone dig around in his pocket for his phone and heard it smash on the pavement nearby, and then there were footsteps echoing through the damp empty streets and the sound of a cat howling as if from a distance. His briefcase was gone, the contents of his overnight bag scattered over the filthy alley. No one there to witness, no one there to help. Left to die alone in a cold and lonely alley, so close to the portal and yet so far.

Standing in the middle of her bedroom, Lyneth doubled over in shock as the knife plunged into Des' abdomen, feeling only an echo ....but it was enough. And across town, Piper paused in the midst of sipping her wine, one hand moving to lay over her stomach as she felt a strangely sharp cramp flare to life and die away. Lyneth straightened up, and as she did so, she changed. Her hair grew longer, her limbs lengthened, her body shifted, until she was no longer the sweet, tiny girl-child she had chosen to be for the past few months, but full-grown, a beautiful half-Fae flexing the delicate wings that fluttered on her back. No one would pay attention to a child, that was certain; but there were few who would dismiss the woman Lyneth could become on whim.

She snapped her fingers, drawing the attention of the fairies, gnomes, pixies, and brownie to her. "Stay here," she told them, her voice warm with a gentle husk that betrayed the adulthood she had chosen to embrace for this one task. "Don't let Kaylee know I'm gone. Ruath?" Her head turned toward the leader of the gnomes who had made this house their home. "Find Mummy. Keep her safe." As the faery folk scattered, the adult half-Fae concentrated her mind, reaching out toward Des as he slumped onto the pavement in his home town. Eyes closed, she stepped forward as Nexus winds whipped about her, and disappeared from Rhy'Din.

The alley was dark, darker than she had expected it to be, rank with the filth and refuse of the day. The young half-Fae cringed at the smell that assaulted her nostrils, distracted by the sudden flit and flutter of multicolored wings before her face as friends rushed to her. Drawn onward by them, she ghosted along the alley, crying out in shock when she found Des lying there, blood seeping from the wound in his stomach, his body prone and tense with pain.

"Des ....Des, no," Lyneth protested softly, knowing more than anyone how much his being hurt would hurt her mother. She fell to her knees beside him, her hand covering the wound helplessly. "No. No, no, you can't, this can't happen. Mummy needs you, Des. Wake up. Wake up!"

A voice seemed to call him to him from across a vast distance, small at first but growing stronger, familiar yet unfamiliar, calling his name, calling him back to consciousness. He didn't want to listen, he didn't want to hear. The darkness was beckoning him to. There was peace in the darkness and there was no pain there. He heard himself groan, blood seeping from the wound, a crimson stain spreading across his crisp white shirt, his fingers wet and sticky with blood. He forced his eyes open to look up into the face of the one who was calling him back, seeing her as through a misty film that clouded his vision. Her face wavered in and out of his field of vision. He knew that face, too. Like the voice, she seemed familiar, yet unfamiliar. If he just focused on her eyes. Turquoise eyes, lovely and innocent and only partly human. "Lyn..." he gasped, writhing in pain, unable to form words that made any sense, even as his voice was crying out for help somewhere inside his head. "Help..."

Relief spread across the lovely face that hovered above his. "Oh, good, you're alive," Lyneth declared, entirely too matter-of-fact for the situation. She reached her arms around him and heaved, utterly failing to do anything but knock herself onto her rear end and pull him on top of her. "Sorry, I'm sorry!" The wings at her back buzzed in a reflection of her emotions, sometimes quick, sometimes slow, but never entirely still. "Mummy's going to be so upset," she informed the bleeding man now half on her lap. "You have to come home, now."

Desmond Granger

Date: 2013-02-14 22:19 EST
Just that small bit of jostling had him groaning again, hovering on the brink of unconsciousness. Somehow he knew if he gave in to the darkness, it would be finished. There was something comforting about that thought, and yet, he was too damned stubborn to give in and die. Not yet. "I-I'm sorry," he muttered, his body not cooperating with him, as much as he wanted to help her, to help himself. It felt like every muscle, every bone, every nerve ending had exploded in agony, and he was feeling weaker and weaker with each passing moment. "T-tell your mother..." His voice trailed off, weakly.

"You tell her. Help!" The call for assistance was not aimed at him, nor at any passerby on the street beyond the alleymouth. It was a call directly to the little faery folk who were watching, aghast at these developments, and they were quick to respond. Though they were tiny, they had between them enough power to stem the bleeding for a little while, to infuse him with a little more strength, as Lyneth once again concentrated. For a long moment, it seemed as though nothing happened, before a strange cracking sound made itself known. Behind Des, the paving stones heaved and shifted, as two coiling arms of strong climbing roses forced their way out from beneath the cloying, choking mass of stone and tar. The vine-like shoots wrapped about Des, easing him gently to his rear, and up onto his feet, taking him with them as they grew.

Buoyed up by those vine-like shoots, Des was forced to his feet, gathering a little strength from the fairies as the bleeding slowed for just a little while, just enough to give him the strength to fight and not give up. Even so, he clung to those vines as though without them, he might collapse again into a bloody, dying mess. His cheek was bruised and cut open, oozing blood, his side flaring painfully, cuts and scrapes and bruises seen and unseen. As serious as his injuries were, given time, they would heal. It was the knife wound that was the problem, and time was running out.

With a flutter, Lyneth's wings flattened to her back, and she pressed herself underneath one of Des' outflung arms, grunting a little as she took his weight from the roses, which continued to grow upward over the brick wall as she struggled to draw the wounded man to the portal. "Come on, come on, little bit further, little bit - ow!" She squeaked as her bare foot came down on his shattered phone, her own blood seeping now from her own little injury. But finally they reached the portal, her hand stretching out to touch the swirling Nexus. She didn't want to arrive in the Marketplace; she needed to get Des to the one person Lyneth knew would know what to do. They had to get to Mummy.

As her fingers stroked through the eddies of energy, an image formed before them ....of a restaurant packed with couples, eating, dancing, laughing, loving; and in their midst, a sable-haired woman seated at a table alone, sad blue eyes straying often to the doorway. "Mummy ..."

"No..." Des muttered, as if in his half-conscious state, he somehow knew where she was taking him. He didn't want Piper to see him this way. He didn't want to scare her or to break her heart. He heard Lyneth cry out, knew he had somehow caused her pain, as she struggled to help him, to save him. The last thing he wanted was to cause either of them pain, and yet, some part of him knew they were the only ones who could help him. He sagged against Lyneth, unable to carry his own weight, completely at her mercy as she took him through the portal.

Ah, Valentine's Day. The love, the laughter, the kisses ....the cliches. Piper was surrounded by it, and had been for some time, the only person sat alone in a crowded restaurant filled with couples of varying ages and races, enjoying one another's company as intimately as was possible in such a public place. She understood that Des' work was keeping him longer than he had expected, yet the longer she sat there, alone in the crowd, the more she felt her spirits dropping, the hope of the evening dissolving into a quiet sense of rejection as the prospect of being stood up loomed ever more over her head. Until she heard a crash of plates being dropped, and voices raised in various declarations of alarm ....and above them, a feminine voice that was somehow only too familiar crying out, "Mummy! Mummy, help!"

She looked up in time to see two figures stumble from the faint glow of a portal, starting abruptly to her feet as she recognised the man. "Oh my God ....Des!" Pushing through the waiters and others who had begun to crowd about the pair, she dropped down onto her knees as they collapsed onto the floor, gasping in shock at the state of her lover. "Oh ....oh God ....someone call an ambulance!" Some part of her mind kicked her into action, reaching up to drag an apron from about the waist of the nearest waiter, bunching it up to press it hard against the seeping wound in Des' abdomen.

As she did this, she looked up at the winged female who had brought him, who was hovering close by. "What happened?" she demanded, setting aside her concern that Des had apparently been keeping company with a Fae in favor of finding out exactly how he'd ended up in this state.

The winged woman cast panicked eyes at her ....panicked turquoise eyes that made her heart lurch with a further shock, even as she spoke. "I don't know ....he was, there were men and he was attacked, and ....Mummy, I don't know!"

Piper's mouth dropped open, her own eyes wide with disbelief. "Lyneth?"

Even in Desmond's half-conscious state, he recognized Piper's voice and a half-smile formed on his face. If he was going to die, at least he was going to be able to see her one last time. "Pip..." he called, his voice weak, barely more than a whisper. It seemed there was a crowd of people gathered around, unfamiliar voices muttering to each other, someone yelling to call an ambulance, but none of that mattered now that he was here, with her. Her and Lyneth. A blood-stained hand groped for hers, eyes the color of rain clouds filling with tears, his face too pale, drained of blood. "Don't leave..." he whispered, needing her to stay with him, no matter how things turned out. "Lynnie....She..." His voice trailed off, growing weaker.

"What the hell ..." Breaking off in mid-stride, Piper forced her eyes away from her apparently all-grown-up daughter, dropping her gaze once again to Des as he whispered to her. The hand not holding an increasingly blood-stained apron to his stomach found his as he groped for her, squeezing gently. "I'm here," she told him fervently. "I'm here, you're fine. The ambulance is coming, and you're going to be fine." Her own eyes, darker blue and sadder now than he had ever seen them, glistened with tears of her own as she leaned down to kiss his forehead. "Don't leave me," she begged softly. "Please, Des. You promised you wouldn't. I can't do this without you."

He didn't want to leave her. He never wanted to leave her, ever again, but he could feel himself slowly slipping away, as if some force he couldn't resist was pulling him away from her, even as he struggled against it. Was it just blissful darkness or was it Death pulling him away from her and into its cold empty embrace" He wasn't sure if he was going to make it or not. It seemed to be out of his hands now, out of his control. There wasn't anymore pain. Just a dull numb feeling of weakness, as if his whole life was flowing out of him, along with the blood. "Lynnie, take care of your Mum," he said, lifting his gaze to the lovely young woman with the wings.

Whether or not he was dying, there were things that needed to be said. He slid his gaze back to Piper, clinging to her hand, even as his own hand grew cold, rivulets of tears trickling down his cheeks. "I love you," he whispered, telling her for only the second time, telling them both. It was the last thing he said, his eyes drifting closed as he let the darkness swallow him up.

((Will Des and Piper triumph over death and bad guys" Will love conquer all? Stay tuned to find out! Massively HUGE thanks to my AWESOME partner in crime for the above scene. Tons of fun, as always. :grin:))