CSI: NY fic: AU: "On the Flip Side of the Coin"

[bedlamsbard]

stellaluna_ asked for one of the mirrorverses in return for a "Mac shows off his amazing powers of profanity!" ficlet, so here it is. Danny from the Bardverse wakes up somewhere a little...different. Part of the same series as "Through the Looking Glass" and yes, All Will Be Explained. (And yes, there will in fact be a "Stranger in a Strange Land.")



Danny woke up with the heady feeling that someone was trying to chop their way out of his brain with a machete. "Flack...?" he whispered, his lips forming the word but sound not quite coming out.

Someone smoothed cool fingers over his brow. "Dr. Messer? You're at the MVC. Try not to move."

He kenw that voice. "Hammerback..."

"Don't talk, Dr. Messer. You've got a mild concussion." Over his shoulder, "Corporal, get the colonel in here. Dr. Messer's woken up."

"-- not a doctor," Danny said scratchily.

Hammerback pried open one of his eyelids, ignoring Danny's automatic yelp of protest as he clicked on a penlight. "Maybe more than a mild concussion. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I need my glasses," Danny said.

Hammerback leaned over and handed them to him. "How many fingers?" he asked again.

"Three."

"Who's the president?"

"George W. Bush." Danny coughed, glanced around. The room was -- well, faintly familiar. It looked a lot like the morgue at the old Mulberry Street lab. Which raised the question of what the hell he was doing there and why Hammerback was calling him doctor.

Hammerback regarded him, looking more than a little mad. "Who's in command of this facility?"

"Ain't this the old lab, doc?" Danny asked, pushing himself up to a sitting position. Hammerbakc put one hand out, like he wanted to stop him, but then pulled back. "You make it sound like we're in the military or somethin'."

The doctor was frowning at him, wary now, scooted back a little. "Dr. Messer?" he said.

"Why you callin' me that, doc?" Danny asked, his head pounding like his old high school marching band had dropped by for a beer and a jam session. He was missing something, he knew it, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what that something was.

Wait. Why would Hammerback be doctoring him? He was a pathologist, not a medical doctor.

"Step back from the bed, doctor," a sharp, Chicago-accented voice snapped from the direction of the door. "That's not our Danny Messer. That's a dupe."

*

Mac put his badge down in front of Danny. "So your'e a police officer," he said.

"A detective," Danny corrected. "A crime scene dick, working for you. Does nobody here got the balls to tell me what the hell's going on?"

Mac and Aiden glanced at each other. That had been a nasty shock, seeing her alive and well. Emphasis on the alive. "Sergeant," Mac said after a moment, "Go find me Major Bonasera and bring her back here."

"Sir," Aiden said and left the office. Danny watched her leave through the glass walls. He'd missed this place, despite how many parts of his life and career had been fucked up here.

Mac stared at Danny. Danny stared back. "Let's get this out of the way," Mac said finally. "Do you know where Dr. Daniel Messer of the USMC is?"

Danny stared at him some more. "No," he said flatly. "Because I can tell you I sure as hell never even thought about joining the Marines."

"Yeah, well, I don't think our Danny did either," Flack said, unfolding from his guard position by the door. "Circumstances change, though."

"What circumstances?" Danny demanded. "As far as I can tell I'm in some messed up hallucination where everyone's in the military."

Flack's mouth twisted slightly. "I woulda preferred a nice, quiet life in the NYPD myself."

"Captain," Mac said sharply. Flack rolled his eyes but didn't say anuything else, just shifted his grip on his M-16 -- or whatever it was -- shaking out his hands in turn. Hands.

"Detective Messer," he continued, "the MVC has come to an interesting an unprecedented paradox. We've nver had a civilian travel through a mirror before -- especially a civilian from an unaware world."

Dannh had a bad feeling about this. "Unaware of what?"

Mac answered matter-of-factly. "The existence of thousands of other, alternate realities, of course, and the mirrors that link them all."

*

Danny put his head in his hands. "For God's sake, someone tell me I'm dreaming. Someone tell me I'm tied up in my cousin's basement with a gun the size of Madagascar to my head. Someone tell me I did not just hear the words 'alternate realities.'"

Flack hefted his gun again. "Yeah, he's definitely from a norm 'verse."

"Will someone explain what the hell's going on?" Danny demanded.

"That's classified," Mac said sharply. "And you are most definitely not cleared."

"Except for the part where he's here," Flack snapped. "Can't get much more cleared than that. C'mon, colonel, who's he gonna tell? You can't just keep the guy here."

"Not yet," Mac said. "Not until Major Bonasera gets here." He and Flack glared at each other.

"Also," he continued after a moment, "if he travelled here through a mirror, that means the Inhumans have been to his reality. Until we can establish that he's not a security risk, he stays here. And we need to ascertain that he knows nothing about the whereabouts of Dr. Messer."

"He would appreciate not being referred to in the third person while he's in the room," Danny said. "And what the hell are the Inhumans?"

Mac and Flack glanced at each other again. "We may have a problem," Mac said.

Stella breezed in through the door. "We have a problem," she said.

Danny did a double-take on seeing her. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, only a few curls escaping, and she was wearing dark green fatigues. Definitely not a cop.

"Problem?" Mac said warily.

"We finally got a tracer on the GPS Danny was wearing when he went missing. I sent a squad out to track it down, but since we've gotten a tracer of absolutely zilch on the chip, I got a bad feeling they've taken him out of this reality. There was a huge power flare that went up a couple hours ago - too large to just account for our friend here coming through. I'm still trying to isolate the energy signatures, but it seems like the Inhumans were transporting through multiple mirrors simultaneously. Mac, we need to find the mirror they used, or there'll be no wy to tell which 'verse they've taken Danny through to. Amd the longer we wait..." She let the words hang in the air.

Mac put his head in his hands. "We knew this would happen sooner or later," he said, voice slightly muffled.

"We also know we're all going to die someday, but that doesn't stop anybody going for a doctor," Stella snapped. "Sir, permission to take a squad and start searching all known mirror addresses."

"Denied." Mac raised his head. "That would be like searching for a very small needle in a very large haystack. We don't have the resources."

Stella stormed past Danny and Flack and slammed her fist down on Mac's desk. "We don't have a choice. What the hell happened to no man left behind? What about semper fidelis?"

"Watch your tone, Major," Mac said flatly. "There's no precedent for --"

"There's no fucking precedent for fighting a war against a bunch of technologically advanced slave traders bent on conquering the multiverse either, but that hasn't stopped you, Colonel," Stella snarled. "And don't even fucking think of threatening to court-martial me, Mac. You aren't my CO."

"Major Bonasera, I want Dr. Messer back as much as you do, but --"

"He hasa name, you jarhead bastard, so why don't you just --"

Flack coughed. Stella and Mac both froze, anger still clear on their faces. "Colonel, I'm just -- going to take Detective Messer down to the infirmary to get checked out." He beat a hasty retreat and Danny followed him, almost knocking over his chair on his way out.

Flack let out a relieved breath of air as soon as they were outside Mac's office. "Mom and Dad are fighting again," he said, glancing back at Mac and Stella, who were now nose to nose and screaming at each other. "They do that in your 'verse too?"

"You have no idea," Danny said fervently. Then he glanced back at the office. The walls were practically shaking. "Or maybe you do."

Flack snorted. "Stella's the only one who'll argue with him. She's not from the Corps -- she's Air Force, on loan from the Pentagon. She and Mac know each other from way back. It gives her liberties no one else's got. Your two like that?"

"A bit," Danny said. "They've been partners since before I got my badge."

"Huh." Flack said. He tapped his fingers on the barrel of his gun. "Yeah, the good old days when I still wanted to be a cop. Life would have been simpler. Easier, even. Probably less violent."

"I don't know," Danny said. "You still have both your hands and you look pretty sane to me. Less PTSD."

"Yeah. Well. These things are all...relative. Listen, Messer, you don't -- got any idea where our Danny is, do you?"

"I would have mentioned it," Danny said. "And I think I'd like to leave now."

Flack glanced away. "Yeah, well, no can do. I can show you to the infirmary, though."

"Great," Danny said. "Another trip to the morgue."

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*sneaky eyes* Well, of course there's an infinite number of possibilities -- there's the "oh, Mac looked left instead of right" 'verses, which aren't any different at all, and then there are the really out there ones, like the Coinverse, and then the really out there ones -- like the 'verse the Inhumans come from, and the ones where the dinosaurs never went extinct, or where the continents broke apart differently, or where the ice age never happened. We may even see some of the Inhuman-colonized 'verses. Hell, we may even catch a glimpse of canon.

Oh, come on. You can't just leave it at that. Story! Lots of stories!

Would it help if I added that her ex-fiance is Mac and the house she's breaking into is the Elder Taylors'?

Definitely something I have to see. As well as Bardverse Mac encountering a well-adjusted Danny. I wonder: is there any 'verse in which that world's version of Mac is reasonably well-adjusted?

The Coinverse Mac is fairly well-adjusted; so is the Glassverse Mac. More or less. Of course, that depends on your definition of "well-adjusted." The Thiefverse Mac stayed in Chicago and became an FBI agent, so that'd be a no on the well-adjusted.

You know you love them.