CSI:NY fic: Bardverse: "Drought"

[bedlamsbard]

Title: Drought
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: CSI:NY
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nothing stays the same, not even the things that change. Bardverse, some two or three years after "The Man Who Wasn't There."
Author's Notes: In a startling turn of events, this is...not, actually, limmenel's fault.



The next time Lindsay saw Danny Messer he threw open the door of Mac's office, grabbed the phone from his hand, and threw it into the wall. The wall survived, slightly dented. The phone did not, mostly broken.

"You son of a bitch," Messer said. "You son of a bitch. Don't you ever come near my wife again, do you hear me? Don't you ever even fucking think about it. She nearly died today because of you."

Mac said, "Get out of my office."

Messer said, "I f I see a cop anywhere near my family again I'm putting a bullet in him, you hear me? I don't care if it's a uniform or a detective, I will put a bullet in them. You keep your goons away from my family. I got enough to worry about without the cops painting targets on my wife and my kid."

"Your wife --" Mac began.

"In the hospital with the docs picking a bullet out of her because of your people." He took a deep breath, visibly calming himself down. "Where's Flack? I've been tyring to get him on the horn for the past three hours."

"He's not here anymore."

Messer's eyes narrowed. "You mean he finally got his head on straight and transferred out of CSU."

"No," Mac said. "I mean he left the NYPD and transferred to another department."

Lindsay, in the hall outside Mac's office with one hand on her gun and the other holding the tox report she'd been bringing him, saw Messer open his mouth, close it, and finally say, conversationally, "You ever notice how everyone around you leaves or dies, Mac? Claire, me, Aiden, Flack, Peyton Driscoll -- I heard about what you did to Stella when that serial went down. Who's next on your hit list? Hawkes, your golden girl Monroe, that homicide dick Angell? You gonna fire Stella next or do you think she's gonna get sick of your shit first and walk out, follow Flack outta town? You're like some kinda poison. I never seen people drop so fast as with you, and I'm in the Mafia."

"How did you hear about the serial?" Mac said.

Messer snorted. "Figures you focus on that. I got connections inside the lab, on the force. They're all pretty disgusted with the shit you pulled, and that's not even counting what you did to Aiden." He jabbed a finger in Mac's face. "I've never been so glad not to be a cop anymore as I am everytime I walk in here. You stay away from my family, Mac. I don't want you infecting them."

"Hawkes talked to your wife because he couldn't find you," Mac said. "Since you're here --"

"You wanna talk to me, Taylor," Messer said, "you arrest me. But whatever the hell you do, you stay away from my family. You got that."

"Lindsay can escort you out," Mac said.

Messer glanced over his shoulder at her. "Don't bother. I know my way out."

end

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*considers* Yeah, to an extent. I want to keep some of the canon events in the Bardverse, but the time when they occur is obviously messed with a lot. I haven't figured out whether or not I want Aiden to be dead or not. What is for certain is that she was fired by Mac and she's no longer with the NYPD. I think she's now working for Danny, but I could be wrong.

Stella actually had nothing to do with the serial. The Frankie incident occurred a little later in the Bardverse than it did in canon, and maybe a year or so later a bunch of abusive husbands and boyfriends were being killed in New York the same way Frankie died -- bullets to the chest -- and a homicide detective unconnected to CSU got the idea that Stella was behind it because the pattern matched the way she killed Frankie. Mac treated Stella the same way he would have any other suspect; she's never forgiven him. She did not, by the way, actually do it.

But Vinnie Messer is a cute kid! Why is Danny + spawn so hard for people to picture?

[(Anonymous)]

Aiden, working for Danny? Now that possibility brings in a whole new level of complicated. *considers Mac's reaction*

Abusive SO-serial killer! Now *that* would have been a cool follow-up to the Frankie incident. Much better than the ridiculous "blood sisters" episode.

I think it's difficult to imagine Danny with a kid because canon, at least, portrays him as being rather immature in many ways. Then again, I have trouble imagining children, period.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Well, not directly working for Danny -- or rather, not working for the Constantine family. If she's not dead (and she very well may be), then she's probably gotten her PI license and she has an outstanding agreement with Danny -- she's not going to involve herself in Mafia business. She does the legit stuff.

I can't decide whether or not I liked that episode. I liked getting a look at Stella's past, but it felt a little...off, you know? Overdramatic. (Says the girl who thinks Danny is the heir to a Mafia family. Pot, kettle.) Serial killers are always interesting if they're played right -- I think I'd like to see Stella being targetted by the NYPD.

Well, this ain't your canon Danny. I get what you mean; I don't write kids a lot of the time because, well, kids. And it's hard to find good kidfic.

(I am surprised it's Danny with a kid throwing people for a loop, though. I thought it'd be Flack leaving the NYPD and New York.)

[(Anonymous)]

Flack leaving New York makes perfect sense in the light of what we've seen. He and Mac barely get along, and I'm inclined to believe Mac when he says no other department will take Flack because of his reputation as a loose cannon. He might be a New Yorker through-and-through, but I think he's also enough of a realist to know that there's not all that much left for him in New York.

Completely random thought: Does he have the same aptitude for math as the Flack in "Blue Blood?"

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And a little of it's Danny's fault, but most of it boils down to Mac and what Flack has made himself in the past seven years since Bloody Sunday, because he really is a loose canon. He's destroyed his reputation at the NYPD, and he's done while maintaining a really fantastic solve rate, but his methods are beyond reasonable. He is a good cop, but he needs to get his head on straight, and that's never going to happen if he stays in New York. Hopefully he'll be able to stabilize himself again once he's out of the city and away from everything that's made him what he is today. (I sort of want to send him to the Philly cold case squad, but I can't figure out whether to do that or send him to join the NOPD.)

Almost certainly not. That sector of the Bardverse -- an AU from this one -- is taking the "what if" to a fairly far edge (okay, even not counting the Mirrorverse), and this Bardverse is much more rooted in the hard reality of the show. It's concentrating more on the characters as what we're presented with in the show, not what could be. (It's also not in the same continuity as the WIP orchestra Flack story.) Flack is a cop, and only a cop, in this story.