TEW Fanfic - Chapter 12: Giving in

“Impossible, inacceptable, unforgivable!!!”

The short heighted coroner nervously paced back and forth in his morgue. Every other second he cast a quick glance at the redhead sitting on his examination table and the albino at the woman’s side that continued to rinse her hand with cool water.

“This is a morgue! Not an examination room and absolutely not a place to treat the living!” Dr Kugel tore at his thinning hair and let out a desperate yowl. “Oh, this is less than marvelous! It’s bad luck- a bad omen!! Castellanos, I agreed to meet with you here- but there was never a word of THIS!”

“Settle down, Kugel, it won’t take long and no one will ever hear a word of it, I promise.” Sebastian merely glanced at the round man for a second before turning his attention on the small tattered notebook once again. He flipped through the pages one by one and skimmed the contents.
The chicken scratch of the dead drug dealer was giving him a headache already. Too many sloppily written notes on the sides of each short paragraph. Too many names and numbers. Going through them one after another would take…long.
He quickly lifted his stare from the pages to take a look at the female detective.
‘Then again- we’ll have more than enough time checking up on all that while she’s recovering…’
Seb let out a deep sigh and leaned back against the cold iron counter whilst continuing to flip through the notebook.

“Does it hurt?”

“It hurts like hell….”

“That’s good.”

“Good!?” The redhead stared at the albino in awe: The stinging, burning pain in her hand was supposed to be good?
 “You’re joking, right?”
She looked at him with one eye closed as he turned off the faucet on the tables head and carefully started drying off the excess water from her hand.
His touch was gentle and assuasive. He had checked up on her while they were on their way to the hospital to make sure she was okay…and now he was taking care of the burn wound too.
His expression seemed so concentrated and every move he made felt…practiced. Experienced.

‘I still don’t know nearly as much about you as I should, right? Well you’re A+ with a gold star in medicine, that’s for sure.’

 She leaned to the side a little to get into a more comfortable position. ‘I wanted to keep an eye on you to make sure you’re okay…and now you’re the one who makes me feel safe…’

“It’s good because it means your nerves are still functioning. You’ll keep a scar from this but otherwise your hands mobility and sensory functions will fully recover.”
He grabbed a small pot of balm from the tray beside him and applied it onto the burned skin. The thick oily mass felt cool and soothing on her reddened flesh.
There were a few other items on the tray- all things he had brought with him when he came back to the morgue after he had dragged the coroner off to the hospitals medicine and resource storage.
Some things among them hadn’t been used yet and Helen blinked fearfully at the sharp scalpel and the syringe between the bandages and the towels he had just used to dry off her hand.

“Still…I didn’t ask you to go back inside to get that book.”
A frown appeared on Ruvik’s face. He grabbed the bandages and started to carefully cover the female detectives hand and wrist in white strings of gauze. Not too tight, not too loose.
He knew exactly how it had to be done. After so many years of treating to his own wounds it was no wonder that it still came naturally. When had the day been where he realized that the pain was bearable even without the wrappings? He had stopped wearing them at one point.
He had stopped caring- and that old man, Jimenez, hadn’t even lost a word about it.
‘He didn’t care either…as long as I was useful to him…’

“How long until it’s all healed up? What do you think?”
“Hm?” He looked into the brown eyes before him. They looked back at him with the question still lingering in their gaze.
He thought for a second. “It depends…” Ruvik added another layer of gauze. The act of applying a bandage felt so familiar, and yet so strange. This small hand wasn’t his.
He fastened the end of the bandage at her wrist and his fingertips brushed against the fabric that covered her palm.

This was the hand that had held his.

He had stopped caring about himself back then but…

Knowing that this hand was now also marked by the fire…
Knowing that now he wouldn’t be able to feel its touch…

…seemed unbearable.

“It depends…the healing process is different for each person. I can’t tell you how long exactly you’ll be unable to use it.”

Unforgivable.

“Well good thing I still have my other hand~”
Helen gave him a weak smile. “You look like this is the end of the world. You already said I’ll be fine, remember?”
“I said that, but you also could have died in there.” he replied sourly. “Going back wasn’t just naive. It was foolish.” She opened her mouth to protest but he interrupted her. “And it wasn’t heroic at all as many times as you try to convince me of it…stand up.” He let go of her hand and stood at her side, waiting for the redhead to get off the examination table.

“I still think I was pretty badass…” She hopped from the table and promptly gasped from the pain that shot through her leg. ‘Oh, right…I almost forgot about THAT.’

The cut on her leg had stopped hurting while she sat down but the sudden movement provided for a sharp reminder of its existence. “Oh holy shi--!” Helen winced and grabbed for the table in her back.  Being a badass had its benefits- this wasn’t one of them.

The young man tugged at the jagged edge of her ripped pants. He pressed against the swollen skin above and under the cut in her thigh- the pain was still there and surged up with every touch of his fingers.
Helen grimaced and held off on yelling out loud at the albino. ‘YES! THIS IS MY LEG YOU’RE HURTING THERE! IT’S INJURED! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT?!’
“I need to cut it off…” he mumbled and her jaw dropped.

“MY LEG?! Are you serious!?”
Helen panicked out of his grip and hobbled half a meter away from the still kneeling albino in an attempt to bring some safety distance between the two.
“It’s just a cut, no?” She bent forward to get a better look at the wound on her leg. “Why would you…”

“Your pants. I need to cut off the leg so I can get a better view on your wound.” He replied monotonously.

“Oh…”
‘Of course he meant the pants…stupid Helen…you’re panicking for no reason.’
She sighed. This was all too much. Monsters, corpses, fire….ghosts. And now she was in a hospital, getting patched up in a morgue of all places.
‘No…it’s not so much the morgue…’


Images of white rooms and heavy wooden doors surfaced somewhere in the depths of her mind.

Her father, calling for her.
The dark doctor with the suitcase, waving at her from the end of the long corridor in their big house. Then, the locks on the suitcase snapping open.
 The lid lifting, exposing—


Helen inhaled deeply and brushed the memories away.
‘It’s just a hospital…no big deal. Focus, Helen, focus!’
She started fumbling with her belt, which proved to be quite difficult, using only one hand. In no way would she allow Leslie to cut off that leg and have her running around like a fashion idiot for the rest of the day.
‘I am not in the mood for setting new trends…and I doubt the world is ready for Helen Saul’s infamous ‘one-legged-pants’ yet…’

“What are you doing?” The albino watched her helpless efforts of undoing the belt buckle.
He asked although he could clearly see what the intention behind her fiddling was. Undressing.
The scalpel he’d already grabbed from the nearby tray was put down again.  
“Trying to take them off if you haven’t noticed…it’s just not that easy with my new handicap.”
She waved at him with her bandaged hand while she shot death glares at the obstinate belt as if doing that could help convincing the accessory to let loose.

Her fingers stopped dead in their movements when they were joined by another set of pale digits. Leslie’s warm fingers undid the belt in less than a second before they grabbed at the hem of her jeans and pulled her closer.
The redhead gasped at the sudden, forceful haul. For a short moment she felt a rush of tension shoot up her spine. The warmth of the albino’s fingers lingered on the skin of her abdomen just long enough to make her blush. Then it was gone again. Helen hadn’t even realized that he had undone the button of her pants already.
“There. I take it you’re able to do the rest alone.”
He had turned around to look at the items on the tray again, waiting for her to move.
“Uh…uh…yeah, I guess.”
She pulled down her pants as far as needed and covered her undies with her jacket.
‘At least today is not a black lace day…’ she thought.

“Detective…I wasn’t going to talk about this yet but…” The coroner waddled a little closer to Sebastian. “I have been the one who examined the corpses of the case…two years ago.”
Castellanos looked at him and closed the organizer.
“Two years ago?”
“Yes, yes, indeed! Two years ago…”He made a nodding motion in the direction of the other two people in the room. “The whole case was kept from the media as best as possible but…of course everyone who worked on it still knew something happened.”
Seb turned his gaze to the redhead, who firmly clutched onto her jacket while Ruvik inspected and cleaned the wound on her leg.

“You’re talking about Helen…” his voice now low in order to keep it between the two men; he turned back to the small doctor at his side.

“…and about the reason I think you should reconsider having her on your team. I didn’t remember her last time- but a few days ago...well…”

“The official version states she went on hiatus to recover from whatever happened back then.”
’There isn’t much information on what really went down and I was too engaged in my own investigations to keep on track with any other cases at that time.’

“That’s the official version…”

“If you know something, spit it out. I am not patient enough to listen to you beating around the bush today.”
The coroners face turned a bright red now. He was obviously convinced that his information was highly important.

“Well” he said in a hissed whisper “all I am saying is- the way these people died was in no way an accident.”
This sparked the detective’s interest. “What else then?” There had been seven deaths in the case that happened prior to the female detective’s two-year-break from the job. Information about what happened back then was scarce and cause for more than enough rumors to justify her choice to stay absent for so long.

“Well, the only ones who would know for sure won’t be able to tell us anymore…”
Kugel moved even closer to the brown haired detective now, only centimeters separating them from being effectively cheek-on-cheek with each other.
“…but everything I saw when I performed the autopsy on those poor souls- spoke for an…execution!”

‘An execution?’ Sebastian took another look at the redhead. She grimaced and then pouted when the albino said something to her about holding still.
Could this woman really do something like that? ‘She had been the only one who came out alive that day, yes, but…she can’t even look at a corpse without almost throwing up…’ he thought.

“Are you sure?” He exchanged a serious look with the coroner.

“Cross my heart! I haven’t been wrong once in over twenty years of practice! I swear!” The little man put a hand on his heart and even saluted to the detective to emphasize his statement.

Castellanos thought for a second. If what the ball-shaped doctor said was true, he had to find out more about the female detective’s past. There had been a case-so there had to be a file for it in the police archives.
The young woman hadn’t shown any signs that spoke against her yet.

‘But still waters run deep they say…’ he nodded at the smaller man before he called out to the others.
“Hey, you two~ “  He started walking towards the examination table. “Are you done yet?”

“I am almost done sewing her up. I could have cut the edges clean to avoid scarring but she refused.”
Ruvik pulled on the string that now formed an even pattern of small stitches on her thigh. The needle went through her skin a few times more until he cut off the end of the medical thread.

“I can deal with a scar- makes a great conversation starter, right?” She gave the man a crooked smile and then gasped when he simply put iodine ointment on the closed wound. The burning sensation subsided after a few seconds and she clumsily pulled up her pants after he had applied a somewhat oversized band aid onto it.
‘And I can deal with that sewing needle….but I hate, hate, HATE syringes…’
The redhead avoided looking at the syringe that lay between the other things on the tray.
He had insisted on giving her a local anesthesia before working on the wound with a scalpel.
‘No thank you…I’ll take the conversation starter over that anytime…’

“In any case you shouldn’t put too much weight on your leg for a while. Keep the bandages dry and clean. I will take a look at the healing process from time to time…”

“What about taking a bath?”

“No baths- except you learn how to renew your bandages yourself.”

“Showers?”

“No.”

‘Great. Only me and the washcloth from now until open end, huh?’ Helen sighed.
“Okay, we’re ready." She nodded at her older partner.
“Good. I still need to make copies of this” he waved with the book she had rescued from the fire, “and we’ll have to discuss what happened today. Possibly also check back with Doyle- it’s likely he has some more info on Sanchez’ last moments than he wants to let us know.”

“Alright! Then off we go! To the bat mobile!”

“Not you.”
“Not you.”

The answer came from both of her partners simultaneously. Their eyes met for a second while Helen’s optimistic expression turned into a pout. “Why not?”

Castellanos answered her. “You’re going home. I want you to rest and take a day off- two if you need it. Ru…Leslie and I will keep you updated on any important information we’ll get. You’re allowed back to work once you can walk normally again. Until then I don’t want to see you anywhere near the police department, understood?” He fixated her until she couldn’t withstand his stare and nodded reluctantly.
“Understood…”
‘I think I know why people keep saying there are no more heroes…if this is how you are thanked for saving the day then it’s really not worth the hassle…’
Helen made a mental note not to whip out her wonder woman day-saving-skills again so soon when she suddenly felt a hand pat on her shoulder.
She looked up and was met with one of the detective’s rare smiles. “You did well today, Saul. Thanks to you we might have something new to work with, finally. I’ll drop you off at your place. Rest for a while- you’ve earned it.”

‘Oh well- maybe it’s not as bad as I thought. Yeah…I earned it…that’s one way to think of it.’
She peeked at the organizer in his hand. As curious as she was about the contents of this thing…she was also hellishly tired. Sebastian had promised they’d keep her updated. Both of them. Her eyes wandered to her other partner. The young man had turned his back on them and was picking something up from the tray.
When he turned around he held a small white pill bottle in his hand.
“They’re strong.” He handed it to her. “Take one with water and then sleep. One. Not more.”

“Okay.” ‘Ugh, pills…’
Would her injuries start hurting more than they did now?

One more thing she didn’t want to think about…
The small bottle disappeared into her pocket and they left the morgue together.

Dr. Kugel watched them leave and sighed. “No…this isn’t good at all…it’s bad. Really bad!”

***************************************************************************

“I don’t like whatever you are trying to start with Saul.”

“I noticed.”

The two men were back at the office. There had been an almost audible silence in the car after Sebastian had dropped off the female detective at the hotel she still resided at. He had shaken his head when he watched her enter the building. Hadn’t she talked about getting an apartment?
Maybe giving her some time off the case was just what she needed to sort out herself while recovering.
And then there was still Dr Kugel and his vague mention of her being part of something much more sinister than he’d expected from the redhead…
The police archives. He would take the chance and search for the case file to find out what really happened two years ago. She couldn’t be a cold blooded killer like the one sitting at the desk next to his, could she? His thoughts went back to what he had wanted to say to the murderer.

“This time she got away with a burned hand and a cut. I won’t just watch this happen and have her dead the next time because she was naïve enough to let you manipulate her.”
He turned another page of the copied text and shot the former neuro-scientist a serious glare.

Ruvik scribbled down a quick note on the side of his copy of the text before he answered. He took his time because the detective was annoying him. His assumption was ridiculous. “I am not doing anything. She went back on her own accord.”
It was the truth. He had watched her, unable to move or to say anything. Seeing her frame disappear into the flaming inferno had filled him with... fright.

Had it been the fire?
Or the fear of losing someone to it…yet again.

“Whatever. Keep your distance from her. You didn’t want her on the team from the start so I don’t see a reason for you two to become friends all of a sudden.” Sebastian leaned back in his chair and noticed the faint afterglow of the sun setting on the horizon. The days seemed shorter than usual for this time of the year. He wouldn’t allow for Helen to fall victim to Victoriano’s scheming. No matter what she had done- nothing could be as unforgiveable as the dark deeds of this heartless man.
The redhead was under his lead. He was responsible for her well-being.

She didn’t know who really lurked behind the innocent features so it was up to him to make sure the white eyed man didn’t lure her into one of his traps to get to his goals.

‘White eyed…’ Sebastian shot back up from his relaxed position. The white eyes! He had almost forgotten about his strange encounter thanks to Helen’s daring escapade in that house.

“How does a person get white eyes?” His question came out of the blue and even caught the albino’s attention who, up until this point, had done a good job ignoring his partner for the most part.
“A rare mutation in genetics. A dictate of nature. Call it what you will…”  Ruvik was slightly irritated by the detectives random inquiry. He was trying to concentrate on the task at hand- which already proved hard enough when his thoughts kept traveling back to the absent female of the team.
He tried shaking it off while deciphering the chicken scratch of the deceased drug dealer.
‘So cold…’ He thought. He remembered the feeling of her skin under his fingertips when he had pulled her closer by the hem of her jeans.
His fingers had brushed over her abdomen. Smooth and cool. If he could go back in time…
Run his thumbs over her hipbones...
Let his hand wander up and pull her even closer. Hold her...just a little longer, a little tighter.
Let her know...
He abruptly stood up and the chair behind him got shoved against the wall with a screeching noise.
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
“What is it? Got a problem?”

A problem?

Yes.

He had a problem.

He had given into the temptation when she’d held him in that fire.
He had sunken into her embrace willingly.
Felt her heartbeat.
Her life.

And now he realized he was starting to crave…more.

“I…” he began, but something caught his eye and he broke off in mid-sentence.



The apple from this morning was still lying on his table.

“One hundred percent free of poison or drugs. Guaranteed.”

He stood at his desk. Eyes stuck on the gift he had received.
Temptation, drug, poison.

‘Liar.’

“I am leaving. I need to be alone.” He started collecting the pages of the copied notes on his desk and got ready to leave. “I’ll have these done tomorrow.” Ruvik hesitated when he had everything packed up. Once more his gaze wandered back to the apple.

It was just an apple.
Just an innocent fruit on a desk in an office.

And at the same time, symbol for so much more.

The inner struggle lasted for only a second. Then he reached out and closed his fingers around the fresh fruit.

Its skin was smooth and cool. The round form perfectly nestling into his palm.
He noticed this and he made a decision.

There were no good-byes said when he left the room and went on his way to leave the building.
Surprisingly. He had expected the detective to hold him back and demand a reason for his sudden leave but nothing of the sort happened.

He held the apple in his hand while he walked and felt it slowly warming up to match his body temperature.


He wouldn’t keep his distance from the female detective.




She had come back to him in that fire.
And now he wouldn’t let her leave him again.

*********************************************************************************

“Never….again.”

Helen drowsily stumbled to the large double bed in her hotel room and carefully climbed on the mattress. The pain in her limbs had started to increase exponentially while she’d gone through her first session of washcloth-bathing herself in front of the bathroom mirror.
Her hair was still wet and the whole bathroom looked like someone had set it underwater but at least the redhead was squeaky clean now…and dead tired.

Her healthy hand blindly reached for the small pill bottle on the nightstand.
A glass of water stood right beside it and a few bubbles rose from its bottom to its surface when her hand brushed against it. They plopped open and released the air that had been trapped inside them.
‘I really hope these help…’ Her previous plan on not taking the medicine at all had slowly crumbled and lastly fallen completely when she had almost slipped on the wet floor and bumped into the door with her injured leg.

“To hell with it...I’ll take them all if they don’t make the pain go away…” She popped the lid of the bottle open and peered inside. A few pills rolled around on the bottom of the small container.
And a neatly folded slip of paper also stuck inside of the bottle.
“Huh…what’s that?”
The redhead scooted up on her elbows and fished out the note with two fingers.
Her lips formed a small smile when she read the first sentence written on it.

Only one- not more.

“Alright, alright…geez…now he’s turned into a fortune teller and mind reader too…one pill, I got it.”
She took one pill out of the bottle and gulped it down with a generous amount of water.
Then she read the rest of the small message.

Changing bandages tomorrow.
Call or message with a set time to meet up.

A phone number was scribbled underneath the last sentence. So they would meet up tomorrow to change her bandages already?
‘I bet he thinks I already messed them up by now…’
Helen peeked at the gauze that was wrapped around her burnt hand. It looked a bit tattered indeed…but not too bad considering the fact that she had poured water over it and touched it more times than she could count in the last hour or so. Ok…it was pretty much ruined.
‘Well it’s one thing to look forward to tomorrow. At least I’ll get out and won’t die from boredom in here that way.’
She placed the note on the nightstand with the pill bottle and the glass of water and turned off the lights.

Now all she had to do was to wait for the pill to take effect and ease the pain.
Her bandaged hand wandered over her stomach and onto her thigh, where her fingers slowly traced the edges of the bandage covering the cut.

The way it was sewn up now it would leave a nasty scar on her body…
Helen sighed. She had said she didn’t mind…but was that really true?

“Scars…”
The image of a heavily scarred ghostly figure appeared before her inner eyes.
‘So many scars on his body…’ She nuzzled her face into the soft pillow beside her head. Recalling the meetings with her unknown savior, she pulled the cushion closer and held onto it.
The redhead still didn’t know what to make of the man in the robe. Was he real?
A ghost?
A guardian angel?
A figment of her imagination.

‘If the last one is true…then it’s no wonder that I feel like this now…’
Her mind clung to his image.
His hypnotizing gaze, the aristocratic features, and the slender yet somehow toned looking body of his.
All together adding to the overwhelming aura of his presence.

Yes, handsome Doyle had made her blush and she’d felt excited when she got the flowers and the card…

But this man, who had saved her twice now….

‘I…’ Her hand slowly wandered up to her stomach again. Forgotten was the pain- because a new sensation was spreading inside her. It ran up and down her spine and lingered on her neck like a kiss for a while before it filled her stomach with a warm, fuzzy feeling. When Helen closed her eyes she could almost hear the myriad of wings quietly flapping.

It didn’t make sense at all. And still.

‘I want to see him again…’

The female detective snuggled under her blankets and drifted into a medicine induced slumber.


********************************************************************

Bright neon lights illuminated the chalk white walls of the underground laboratory. The faint beeping noise of computers and other machines was heard in the room.
A single person was inside, sitting on a desk and taking notes while continuously checking the output on the large computer screen in front of them.

“Excellent. It’s almost perfect now.” The hushed whisper was that of a female voice. The woman in the lab coat adjusted her glasses and checked the data on her script once more before she shut off the monitor. “At this rate we should be able to show them the fruits of our hard labor …MY hard labor…very soon.” She grinned and stood up from the desk. The scientist stretched her body and stifled a yawn. She brushed a hand through her short blonde hair and walked over to a set of screens on the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Various rooms were seen on the screens that were connected to security cameras inside the facility.
One in particular had her utmost attention.
The blonde woman placed her hand on the flickering TV and spoke louder this time.

“I can’t wait…how about you…?”