Bless me Father, for I have sinned, it's been twenty-three years since my last CONFESSION (meme).

There's a calendar somewhere around here.
[[OOC: Have something you think happened? Want something to happen?  Share it and gimme the date and I'll pencil it in.]]

When she walked into the station, heads turned and there was silence. The entire floor stopped and she didn't like it. She didn't like it at all. Reese frowned and kept moving, putting her briefcase on top of a pile of papers and manila folders. Her head felt thick, thanks to waking up in an unairconditioned apartment with the windows down. Los Angeles heat was shit in the summer.

To make matters worse, they were repaving the goddamn street.

She'd asked Crews to pick up coffee, which he said he would, but he wasn't back yet. That just annoyed her and she turned to glance at Tidwell's office for a moment and froze. Charles Crews Sr. was sitting, stiff, in a chair. It wasn't the right kind of stiff either, it was the kind where you were getting shit news.

She rapped on the door, frowning, and Tidwell gestured.

( Nightmares. Again. )

It was very green now in the corner where she sat, dirt smudged, her back to the world, her eyes on the carefully stacked stones before her. She'd had to take a moment to pull in the silence again when the watering can's spout had broken and then the bottom had simply fallen out. She'd had to take another when she remembered Austin. And another when she thought about how Julian had insisted on a picnic and another when--

That had been two hours ago.

The garden, her garden, deep in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of orchids collected from around the Island, sifted and sorted, arranged by color and careful care by Garak and herself, was quiet. There were birds that called, the sharp chatter of spider monkeys, but everything else was silent and the mud (which had been dirt) had caked dry on her legs and on her cheek, in her long hair.

In this moment, there was emptiness even as she raged against the Island. She was empty, still, quiet, and her eyes burned with the sting of tears.

It was not too much.

"Moving," she whispered, "the Universe is moving. And I must be still. I can be...I can. Be still."

But her hands shook and her voice was hoarse.

The weather was cooling and quickly, like a machine running hot and then suddenly reversing. She'd been out in it for awhile, banking the flowers and vegetables, covering them as much as she could with towels and blankets.  If they were headed for snow, that meant a year's worth of grown was likely to be damaged.  There was no time to get to the orchids.  Not when she wasn't sure Zaibas could run it and back without dying from the cold.  She wouldn't risk him or ask that of him.

Orchids could grow again.

Everything could grow again.

Reese frowned as she moved back inside and brought out the large bowl she'd traded that wolf figurine for and carefully scooped up her koi.  It was just starting to get into the realm of 'entirely too nippy' by the time she was attempting to wrestle the damn fishbowl up the steps and inside. 

Patrol started with coffee. It always started with coffee because if she didn't get her coffee, she was intolerable. Even back in Los Angeles, Crews knew she needed coffee before anything and they usually went out first thing, sometimes before the day even officially started. They never said a word until she was about five sips in.

Partnering up with Mitchell was almost a retraining process as the felt each other out like new partners did. He was a friend, a good one, maybe her best on the Island -- such as it stood. Back home, she didn't pal around with anyone, she'd just done her work and went home. After the drugs, she didn't fuck with work friends, didn't fuck with anyone. And now she was here, on Tabula Rasa and there weren't really any rules anymore.

"Fuck," she muttered, sipping at the coffee as it ran over the edge. That'll teach you to not pay the fuck attention, she snarled at herself. She leaned to shut a cabinet door and heard a rustling sound, then it burst open and she was face to face with a goddamn spider monkey. No. Two.

The fuck?

Two more.

And they were wrestling with two tupperware containers. Monkey A shrieked and blew the hell out of the room with the bottom of what looked like a four quart piece. Monkey B climbed up Reese's leg chattering and smacking at her with his lid while the other two (C and D) made a getaway with their prizes; a two quart container and its lid.

Reese dropped her mug (which shattered and sent shards and coffee everywhere, though, thankfully not on her) and reached to grab the lid and the monkey. The quick bastard squirmed right out of her grasp.

"For fuck's sake," she growled. "I wanna report a theft."

She'd been sitting often, just sitting, sitting like the silence was somehow going to fill, breathing it in like the ache was going to lessen. Wondering. She watched her fish, the black and white pair of koi she'd liberated from Crews's pond what seemed like yesterday and was far longer than that. Far longer than when she realized his hut wasn't empty and had stopped going to feed the fish.

She hoped they were still alive.

His fish weren't his fish anymore, they were someone else's fish. His hut wasn't his either, it was someone else's. It was mildly disturbing until she let go of it (because it wasn't hers and she wasn't attached to it). Crews wasn't here and if he wasn't here, nothing was his. Except there was always something because you couldn't have nothing. Because if you had nothing, you could have it because it didn't exist.

( Sometimes. )

Brought to you by Angus & Julia Stone's Wooden Chair. Lyrics.

Reese woke cold.

There was nothing but stillness and the soft rush of knocking as one of the shutters unlatched and flapped uselessly. She shoved herself up, a hand in her hair as she drew a breath. Catalina sat peering across the darkness, but didn't move. Sarahcat moved through the room to shove her head against Reese's chest. She rubbed at the jaguar for a moment.

"Julian?" She rose tiredly and reached for her robe and knocked his bear off its shelf. "Shit," Reese muttered as she snagged the stuffed animal and brushed him off before frowning gently and putting him back up. "Julian, that shutter's come loose again."

Silence.

"Julian?" Her eyes found the bear and she dropped her robe as her fingers flew to her mouth. She moved, then, the nightgown clinging to her as she broke into cold sweat. Empty. Empty, empty, empty. His PADD was gone, the materials he'd been working on were gone. His clothes were gone. His thi--

Fuck.

Reese walked out the front door to the soft clack, clack, clack of the shutter and Zaibas's eyes glimmered as they found hers. He lifted his head and padded over, tongue flicking as Saracat and Catalina both sat, leaning into her legs as the hound threw back his head and bayed.

Reese just blinked and half fell, half sat.

Breathe.

She blinked slowly.

( Gone. )

Reese tugged the faded red t-shirt back over her head as she kicked up sand from a somewhat hard jog down the beach (and resolved a few moments later, to find shorts that didn't ride up her ass quite this much).  Bare feet were better for this sort of thing, as she'd found out some time ago.  The resistance was tolerable and after an hour of constant running, her legs were starting to burn as she pushed through the lactic acid burn.  She'd stop when she got to the rocks.

Maybe.

She could always do one more round to try and ease the restlessness.  Reese winced and eased into a fast walk to start to cool down, scanning the beach ahead for trouble...or people.  Or people who were trouble.  She blamed the detective in her for that, but it helped to keep her skills sharp.  By the time she was feeling ready to pause, she had actually reached her designated stopping point, anyway, and took a long swig out of her water bottle.

[backdated to 02.08.2009]

It had been awhile since she checked in on her former partner, so she headed through the brush, leaving both Zaibas and Sarah behind for once.  It was the barking that caught her attention first and the sight of Catalina, Crews's puppy that he'd got from someone, barking at a partially open door that almost made her want her gun.  Reese frowned and moved cautiously forward until she reached the puppy and knelt.

"What's wrong, Cat?" she asked as if the damn thing could answer her.  That didn't happen, though, and after a moment of fending of kisses (and more barking) she called out, "Crews?  Don't you ever feed this damn dog?" 

Silence.

"Crews?"

She nudged the door open and glanced around before leaning against the door frame and letting out a breath.  He was gone, like Austin.  Just gone.  Reese glanced down at Catalina's tilted head as she snuffled but didn't go inside.

"Guess you're coming home with me," Reese said, padding back outside to sit on one of the big rocks for a moment.  "He's not going to be coming home, Cat."  The puppy whined and flopped down beside her, licking Reese's arm as she put an overly large paw on the woman's leg.  She watched the koi swim circles for awhile, a long while, before she and Catalina slowly made their way back to the hut Reese shared with Julian.

Austin, Ayla, Crews.

It was a list that would probably grow.

Reese wondered how it fucking worked, how the Island did its shit without her catching on. And particularly, she thought as she stared at the ink black rock ceiling, she wanted to know why it picked on them and why she had a penis. She'd figured it out about thirty seconds ago and hadn't panicked. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Yet. Then again...

"Julian," she said in quietly irritated disbelief. "Wake the fuck up. The Island is being a bitch."

It was not amusing. Not in the goddamn least. And she was going to figure out how to take a piss. Out of all the generally male things connected to a very male body, that sorta wigged her out. Dani Reese liked the general configuration of the male body, but that was very different when your own body has somehow turned its gender right inside out and pretty much upside down. To make things worse, she was curled up around Julian very, very snugly...and that wasn't helping matters.

She closed her eyes and carefully inched away until her feet touched the floor. It wasn't the height that was the problem. No, she could deal with that pretty decently. The hair was excusable, if longer than she might have thought it ought to be, and even the stubble wasn't that annoying. No, she had bigger issues. Reese glanced at her lap and frowned.

"...how do I make this go away?" she finally asked. How did guys manage to-- God. Not that it was horrible, it was just bothersome at the moment because she had other things to deal with. Like actually being a man.

The dreams didn't matter.

She knew the fears (betrayal and loss were frontrunners along with the usual suspects of abandonment and paranoia) and she knew the reasons and she did a fuckload of thinking about it almost all the time, but it didn't make much of a difference. It didn't make a difference because the nightmares came and went nightly like clockwork. And her eyes snapped open as she rolled away from the comfort of Julian's arms. At her end of the bed, Sarah woke and glanced up at her, but simply stayed put as Reese slipped out of bed, snagged her thin muted gray-blue robe, and prodded the nearly dead fire. She stared at the glowing embers for a moment and rebuilt the fire to last another hour or so as she boiled water for tea.

The dreams didn't matter.

They were loud, the dreams. Loud enough and strong enough that the echoes could be felt long enough that she could see the flickering images when she blinked. The Blow and the violence, the past cases, the junkies and whores, the death. The people she'd left behind. Reese shook her head slightly, sweetened her tea and walked through the shell curtain. The flickering firelight from the pit cast odd patterns on the rock walls as she sank down against the edge of sweet, fresh scented rush bed. It wasn't quiet, it wasn't still, it wasn't empty. She glanced at Julian and a smile tugged at her lips.

It was full.

Wasn't it?

[[This post brought to you by Bear McCreary, which I highly recommend listening to. Apparently it was necessary to split this up into two posts, so this will be linked to the EP.]]

Dani Reese tipped her face into the wind as she trudged down the path that lead to the hut she shared with Austin, and in flickers, she could feel echoes of the past. There was nothing but a heavy, heavy silence around her like the deep drifts of snow that had now vanished. Her boot came down against the worn path and for every footstep, she remembered with an intensity that frightened her. She remembered his face that first day he’d come to her, stubble on his cheeks, those damn sunglasses on his face making him look serious business and just about crazy badass. God, she could see him standing there right now as she moved through the near cool afternoon air.

”Detective Reese,” he’d said. He’d been scruffy and jittery with caffeine and sleeplessness, and happy to get out his jeans. Happier still in a guarded sort of way when he’d gotten used the water after running and jumping into it.

“Officer Austin,” she’d shot back, “You look like shit." There had been a time when he was annoying, when he was just this Austin she didn’t know from anyone and thought he was just some giant walking dork. Reese crossed the bridge, clinging to the rope railing as she overbalanced slightly.

“Just saying,” Reese had murmured, “clothes are generally considered good things as they cover up your...” she tried to find something not rude, “dangly bits, there, Austin.” Her eyebrows had arched, then. “You weren’t part of some nudist cop colony, were you?”

“My dangly bits?” he repeated blankly, then glanced down, making the connection. “Do my dangly bits bother you, Reese?”

She blinked at the memory, so sharp it hurt, so perfectly there she could see the slight smile on his face. Her feet hit springy undergrowth as she remembered stupidly singing him to sleep, and how his face had relaxed in that perfect moment where he fell asleep for the first time ever. Reese looked up at the hut, then, frowning as the door was slightly open. Her heart hit her throat and she began moving up the steps two at a time.

( Wherein Dani Reese loses more than she ever thought possible. )

Reese didn’t know where she was going and she didn’t give a shit about the heat. It was a Friday morning (she’d been counting and she liked Fridays) and she’d decided that since she couldn’t find Austin, that he wasn’t there to be found, she was getting away. She’d spoken to Del, but that was it. No one else, though she’d meant to stop by and visit Tricia, she’d been too busy pulling together her supplies to remember. It had been late when she’d left her cave, the backpack light but filled with useful things (like a jug with water and two cool mineral cups wrapped in cloth, and her herb kit just in case she ran into trouble). She’d found white things. The fabric was light, the pants soft, the shirt billowing, though it clung to her shoulders and stuck to her back now.

Sweat dripped off the end of her nose and she wiped at it absently as she crested the hill that was studded with rocks. Reese knew she was probably lost, but it wasn’t like the Island was going to suddenly get any bigger. She didn’t let it bother her and turned her face into the sun, letting it wash over her like rain as she leaned her weight into the leg that had found a sturdy rock. Before her, there was a clearing and a few dozen boulders and slabs of rocks were scattered about like dice thrown by some giant hand. She’d fallen silent after her conversation with Del and she wasn’t sure she felt like speaking again for a long while. Maybe she’d say something to Austin.

Maybe.

( Here's how it goes. )

She needed to look. It wasn’t a want anymore and it wasn’t a whim, it was a horrible looming pit of need. She had a wilderness hiker’s backpack (it was sandy brown, buckles and pockets and compartments everywhere) filled with essential shit -- water, food that would keep, bandages, herbs, a bedroll, a few changes of clothes. She’d woken up cold and sweating and annoyed when she realized that it had only been an hour and a half, but she forced herself to move anyway.

It was early morning, the kind where dawn’s fingers were still leaving faint pink streaks in the brightening sky.

Her lips were tight when she started walking and she stopped halfway to New Atlantis, eyes closed as she tried not to think. The torrent of thoughts came anyway. He could be dead. He could be gone. He could have been eaten by something. Austin. Her Austin. She’d patched him up, helped him find who he was, who he might become, patched him up more, watched him grow, had said enough to him, had loved him, had found him when there was nothing but darkness, had pulled him out, called him back. Reese took a sip of water from a bottle, fingers trembling.

He’d look for her.

She wouldn’t give up on him.

Reese growled under her breath and shoved herself upright, wiry muscles taut as the tension in her thoughts crawled through her body like electricity. She had to look. She’d cover the surface of this reality if she had to, every last bit. She was going to do this.

Now.