Grief
As soon as the news registered, it was like the world suddenly disconnected from his brain and everything became static.
Henry was...Henry was...
Dead.
Ian abruptly turned without a word, ignoring the concerned calls, and left the hospital as quickly as possible. He felt disconnected, his mind frozen in that one glaring crystallized moment, unable to think, a white static that filled his ears. His body, acting almost on some sort of preset autopilot, was carrying him, he didn't know where. Some distant part of his rationality still holding onto the here and now knew that he had to get away, get far, far away before...
Some distant part of him knew that he was running, feeling the flex and bunch of burning muscles, the slick of sweat, the rapid beating of his heart, the burn of his lungs. Distant sounds of honking cars and curses in his ear, informed him occasionally that he had run out into traffic a time or two.
Then the backdrop of urbanization began to fall away and things became gradually darker and quieter.
Then he blinked and found himself suddenly surrounded by barren desert.
Ian's legs gave out from the strain of it all, and he collapsed into the dry grit of the Mohabi desert, the place where he had been reborn into this new world, naked and terrified, where Henry, his wife and children, George and his family, Albert and so many other Tenctonese had been reborn. All of them Newcomers in different ways. Tears burned his eyes, salted his lips and made a semi-abstract in water colour of his surroundings.
It was here, the only place he could go, that Ian retreated and Harry let loose his grief.
He was always so controlled of his more violent emotions, he's had to be, or risk not only his secret, but the lives of those around him should he ever let go. This time though, he could not control his emotions.
Harry's rage was the first, a disbelieving impotant shriek that wail at the injustice of it all,that his closest friend had been taken from him, taken like so many others by time and circumstance before him. He wanted to tare something apart, he wanted to drown the world in his rage and grief over the senseless, useless, loss.
Harry's world was filled with punishing, raging hot winds, molten fire that danced with creatures never conceived of in this world, raking the screaming winds and roiling ground.
It hurt, it burned and froze and shook and broke right along with Harry as he let go for the first time in a very long time, and grieved.
Seismologists would later note in newspapers, or a side-note made by a weatherman, of the small Earthquake that had spread out from the desert and into LA. The residents were used to worse, it was California after all, and it wasn't the devestating shakers that had toppled whole swathes of buildings over the years, no, it was the strange weather came out of nowhere at the exact same time that had caught the media. A raging sandstorm that had covered the desert for miles in every direction and blanketing over L.A. The raging wall of sand lasted for several hours, and filled the city's nooks and crannies with sand, even burying a few cars and buildings. No one would be able to explain the out of nowhere record breaking sandstorm and would puzzle quite a few meteorologists.
A month later, a lucky group of Newcomer Naturalists on a pilgrimage to the crash site, would stumble across a 50 ft deep man-sized hole, whose inner surface was mysteriously layered in thick rippling glass, and debate among themselves the possible spiritual and scientific significance of the find.
ooo ooo ooo
Ian returned to work only a few days after the news of Henry's death was broken to the rest of the precinct.
He received sympathetic nods, the occasional pat on the shoulder, or awkward invites to get hammered at some local bar.
Ian didn't say anything, and he gave off such an air of unapproachable that, despite being a skinny youthful looking squirt of a rookie, some instinctual, primitive part of the brain of his coworkers sent up a 'run-for-the-hills-dangerous-as-fuck' vibe.
His work was going through the motions, riding desk duty until he was assigned a new partner after the department mandated grieving period was declared over...well, and his general dangerous air that the Captain smartly read as a PR nightmare itching to happen. When he wasn't working, he was with Vera and the kids, the only place he allowed himself to soften, as he helped her deal with the funeral arrangements, and provide emotional support.
He also had abandoned finding his own place, and gave up living in a car, moving in at Vera's insistence during this trying time in their lives because now, with Henry dead, and in an economy that wasn't exactly friendly towards a low paid waiter and a desk bound rookie, particularly when looking after three school aged children to feed. Vera's brother Stanley and his human partner Josh who lived in the same building, took turns helping out with babysitting, but both of them didn't have much in the way of well paying jobs either, and Stanley had a pod on the way as it was.
Ian started taking more shifts when he wasn't helping out with the kids, and gave his pay checks to Vera to help with the kids and paying rent and other necessities, and had only taken a break outside of these duties to attend the funeral. He had let the children cling to him as he held the youngest in his arms throughout the ceremony, and when a distraught Vera had echoed her dispair and confusion over losing her husband to a supportive George Fransisco.
"It was just supposed to be a simple procedure, how...how could this have happened? How?"
"I don't know," George said quietly and hugged Vera. Ian didn't notice the determined look that entered George's eyes, to preoccupied with the children and his own grief.
ooo ooo ooo
2 Days later...
George frowned thoughtfully at his raw peacock sandwich.
Matt, noticing his partner's frown, lowered his coffee and asked "Hey George, what's the matter? You finally buck up your nerve to buy that fancy sandwich and your hardly eating it. Is there feathers in the mustard or something?"
"No, its not my lunch," George sighs, pushing the raw poultry aside, he gestured with a nod towards a desk that was groaning under neat towers of paperwork, a desk sitting across from a conspicuously unoccupied one, baring a lone police hat, A desk which no one had the nerve to clean out in the presence of Officer Freely, who was currently face down in a pile of telephone scam reports and take-in reports, snoring lightly.
"Jesus, the rookie looks horrible," Matt sighed, noting the dark circles under Ian's eyes, skin grayish tinge, and his hair was a greasy ball that was even messier then usual some how. Their erstwhile chief had attempted to comment on Ian's less then sharp appearance one day when he called Ian into his office...something that was not repeated.
"He's been taking on extra shifts, offering to do the paperwork or other odd jobs that other officers procrastinate on for extra cash. The only time that he leaves work is when he is helping with looking after his partner's children when there is no one to babysit, or when Vera comes and drags Harry home to sleep," George sighed.
Matt didn't say anything, just muttered something about him being late to meet his doctor friend. George noticed absently that Matt still limped from spraining his groin muscle during their basketball game yesterday. George wasn't unduly surprised by Matt's reaction to their colleges obvious alarming spiraling. Matt was not the sort to discuss emotions, and the memories of his own partner, murdered in the line of duty, would be fresh in his mind.
George tore his gaze away from the exhausted Officer, his eyes straying to the medical file he had managed to have smuggled out of the Tencton Hospital. Vera had asked George why it had happened, a simple procedure they had said. Henry had taken a bullet for him, and Vera's depressed confusion, the grieving eyes of the three children clinging onto officer Freely's person, said man who was working himself to the bone to escape his emotions and support the only people that he had left. There was something not right all around about the story around his death, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, to be absolutely sure that there really was nothing more to this then a senseless tragedy.