SERIES:  Halcyon

AUTHOR: Missy

EMAIL: lasfic@yahoo.com

PART: 1 of 1

RATING:  PG-13 (Adult content, character death)

PAIRING(s): L/L; Laverne/Other (Surprise)

DISTRIBUTION: To Myself  so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine.  Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MISTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

CATEGORY:  Drama, Angst, Romance

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SETTING IN TIMELINE: alternate timeline; takes place approximately thirty years post-season 8. 

SPOILLER/SUMMARY:  “Come With Me" (Lavenny.  And other, heavier things)

NOTES:  Inspired by a Christmas Exchange Fic Prompt.

***

She had been picking through a trash drum on Venice Beach when she heard him speak.

“Come with me.”

The words were whispered but they drew her close to the edge of the ocean. 

“Will you come with me?”

She hung back timidly, rankled, accusing herself of ruining her life with that last fifth of tequila.

“I’m here, Laverne – I miss you so much…”

They enticed her into stripping off her old ragged sweater and hole-dotted stretch pants, her oversized underwear barely held up by her starvation-thinned frame. 

The waves parted and revealed him – skin paper white and unblemished, his hair thick and blond. 

“I’m dreaming,” she said clearly, but if she was, the waking world wasn’t her desire anymore – what did it hold but another hungry day?  So she walked toward the mirage standing strong and straight in the middle of the ocean and waded through the undercurrent, her legs regaining their youthful strength with every stroke, until she stood before him.

“It’s real,” he told her, his hand running through her hair.

Her eyes filled with tears.  “I missed you,” she admitted.

“I missed you too,” he smiled – his beautiful smile that had existed for the last twenty years in a photograph – “we don’t gotta miss each other no more.”

All of her resistance eroded away – the small promises she’d made to friends of friends melting into the distance.  She buried her face against the red-burnished chest hair and knew she could walk for a year if she could hold his hand.  “Can I go with you?”

“Why do you think I came?” he asked, touching her   “You’re gonna love it there, Vernie.”

“Where?” she wondered, sounding as naive as her long-lost Shirley.

“You’ll see,” he said, pulling apart their nude bodies and taking her hand.  She was stricken by his unusual sense of confidence as her strides parted the water and leading them to a place beyond the frivolity of Venice.

***

A lovely gay couple found her, bloated and blue from the water in her lungs, on the shore that morning.  By noon she had attracted a circle of LA’s finest, who clucked their tongues as took down her vitals and prepped her for the morgue.

“Let’s run our data.  The victim appears to be homeless, so there’s no motive for robbery.  No signs of a struggle.  Considering the condition of the corpse and barring tissue sample results, looks like we have a suicide,” said the portly and balding senior officer to his partner.

“I don’t think so,” responded his younger assistant as he leaned close to the corpse, examining the burst veins on her nose.  “Gin blossoms.  My guess is she was an alcoholic.”

“Accidental drowning?”

He pushed his glove-covered hand carefully into the pocket of her soaked pants and pulled out a green-and-gold-stained crucifix necklace.  “Definitely accidental.”

The older officer itched his thick mustache thoughtfully.  “Good work, Nelson.”

“CHIEF!” they both whipped around to see the head of Forensics, Muldoon, as he jogged up the length of the beach.  Panting, he told them, “We found an abandoned purse in the shower stalls, and I think it’s got the ID on your Jane Doe,” he held out an old navy-colored purse with a clasp in the shape of a cobra’s head.

Officer Nelson snapped the purse open, pulling out a wallet.  He glimpsed at the distorted features of his corpse and the picture in the California Welfare ID card.  “I think we’ve got a match.  What do you think, Hughes?”

Chief Hughes applied his eye to the picture and the woman’s face   He reeled as his denial was peeled away. “Holy shit,” he crossed himself.  “I knew this woman,” he said quietly to Nelson.  “Dated her, back in Milwaukee.” He knelt by her head and ran his fingers over Laverne’s icy, open palms.  Turning quickly away he stood up.  “Call the meat wagon,” he barked at Muldoon over his shoulder.

He felt Officer Nelson behind him the entire way up the beach, but the younger officer didn’t risk speaking until they were far past the shower stalls and back beside their cruiser. “You think Ms. Kowsnowski had any relatives?” he finally asked.

Hughes shook his head.  “She married a guy we both knew five years after she moved out here.  I went to the wedding – he was a nice guy, so I wasn’t too pissed -  And Laverne – she was so happy.  They were together a year before he died in a traffic accident.”  He looked out toward the roaring sea as if he could see back down to the shore and Muldoon as he tucked the remnants of his vibrant lover into a body bag.  “She was never the same after that – never remarried, never had any kids.  When her best friend moved away she started drinking heavily, and it got worse when Shirley died a couple of years ago.  Her kids kept trying to get Laverne into rehab but she kept disappearing.  Last time I saw her she was in the holding tank for assault on an officer,” Hughes shook his head.  “I offered to sponsor her in AA but she disappeared again.”  Nelson hung back nervously, worried that he might have to give his superior comfort, but Hughes held himself together.  “She was always a pistol,” he said, a secretive smile crossing his face, “ask you Pop about that.”

Before Nelson could ask, the hearse – a modified fire truck from the 20’s – roared up beside them.  As if on cue Muldoon appeared on the pathway, where he guided the two interns and their gurney to the shore.  Hughes could picture what was happening in his head but felt rooted to the ground – until he got ahold of Shirley’s kids, Laverne was his responsibility again.  He’d never forgotten the promise he’d made to her father, and he never intended on breaking it.

He watched as Muldoon pushed the gurney up the cement-banked incline and impulsively stopped them before they could load her inside the waiting transport.  Pulling back the blue covering, he impulsively pressed a kiss to her forehead.  “Rest in peace, baby,” he whispered, then took off his jacket and tucked it under her head.

It took Norman a minute to realize that the others were confused by his reaction – unable to understand why their steely chief had gone soft over some Jane Doe.  Nelson, who had come to know him better over the last year, finally got the courage to put a hand on his shoulder.

He started out of his trance.  “I’m all right,” he said, recovering Laverne’s face.  “We gotta get back,”

“Is it okay?” Nelson asked, staying calm. 

“Yeah,” he said, watching the ambulance’s door shut.  “It’s okay.  She didn’t look like she was in pain.”

Nelson nodded and opened the car for his chief, then slid into the driver’s side.

As they pulled out of the lot, only Nelson could hear his boss’ woeful sigh.

“That was the happiest corpse I ever saw.”