It had been a rough few weeks for PD Joseph Linely. That was for sure. He'd never intended for things to work out the way they did. But that was how God, by his divine providence, had willed it. As Joseph Linely trudged through the leaves that had been swept into the street, the cases flashed through his mind. The rash actions he had taken in the Rag Man case. The trauma of the New Moon slasher case. Had he given over a woman to a group of unsavory telepaths in order to save the skin of people he cared about? Noel had warned him to be careful of who was holding his leash. Well, he tried to serve his Lord Jesus Christ only. But was the state acting in a Godly way? The President didn't hugely seem to be. Then there was the whole issue of the METAs and Roach... had he been too quick to trust a criminal mutant? Had he betrayed his fellow man? Devon meant well, but did his other deputies mean as well as he did? Would the law be violated in the name of protecting "mutants" from being brought to justice? Linely would have a lot to talk about with the Minister. 

Another leaf crunched under his foot in the dry of the sun. It would have felt warmer if it wasn't for the blowing of the wind. Linely had opted for a suit and a decent amount of sun-screen. If Emily could have seen him, she would have laughed at his perhaps poor application. He couldn't help the fact that he burnt easily, it wasn't exactly common to have burning sun in Yorkshire....Yes , there was Emily as well, how on earth was he going to explain the situation to her? Marriage was on the cards, but they both had lives, would a police officer constantly being in harms way be a good environment for a child to grow up in? Did Emily really want to live in a world where her children didn't know whether daddy was coming home? At least the Sunscreen didn't have a dilemma attached to it. That at least was doing its job. Linely kept walking until he reached his destination. 

Trinity Calvin Presbyterian Church, in the old building of St John's (well as old as you could get in the USA. He'd gone to a Presbyterian Church in a 13th Century Guild Hall, now THAT was old.) Opening the large doors into the silence. His footsteps echoed in the building.  Not a soul to be seen. Merely a present vacancy in the echoe of his own movement. At least the lights were on, meaning the minister was clearly here. That was something.  Linely checked his watch.  He'd  arrived quite early for his appointment. The minister was likely handling something like Church finances-no wait!-a prayer meeting, Emily said she was going to that... this was gonna be awkward.

Linely sat down at  one of the pews to wait, and casually got hold of his smartphone. The Church had free wifi, which was always a nice touch, though it still used a KJV translation, provided in the back of every Pew, for people to follow along in the sermons. Sometimes students and teenagers in the Church would be avid notetakers and be listening to the sermons, while the friend they had brought along would be just as avidly tweeting about something irrelevant.  At least he wasn't being paged this time. He waited in silence for time to elapse. Even the tapping of his own feet achieved an echo. 

Suddenly the sound of his own foot tapping was interrupted by the sound of the door opening again. Linely didn't turn round initially, preferring to let whoever it was have their privacy. If they wanted to talk, they would likely come up to him anyway.

Sometimes a good walk helped clear your mind, sometimes it just made you wallow in whatever is bugging you.

Henry had closed the shop after receiving a call from his ex wife Sarah. Their daughter Aerial had been given a scholarship to a technology summer camp for kids nation wide. It was a great opportunity for his little girl and she was on cloud nine. It also meant that she wouldn't be coming to spend the summer with him.

Sarah had gotten her for the school years and he got her on winter break and in the summer. He knew Aerial wasn't the biggest fan of the arrangement anyway. Henry's apartment was small and he had the shop to run. But the soldier always looked forward to it. Now he had nothing but an empty place to look forward to.

His feet brought him to a large church with a sign plastered on the front reading "Trinity Calvin Presbyterian Church" Being a good Italian boy, well an Italian boy at least Henry had been raised Catholic. His years oversees however had taught him denomination rarely mattered. You could have church anywhere.

He opened the large doors and entered the church. The lights were on and he started to make his way up the long rows of pews when he noticed a man in a suit sitting in one of them. By comparison Henry looked like a heathen. His jeans and black tee-shirt did not express the same refined calm as the man's suit. His sleeves of Tattoos also didn't help the image. The man looked younger than Henry, maybe I'm his mid twenties.

The soldier walked up and say at the end of the pew the man occupied.

"You look like you got a lot on your mind son." He said simply.

Normally not one to reach out it was strange for Henry. But he wasn't going to push, if the man wanted to talk he'd respond. If he didn't silence was as good a companion as anyone.

The footsteps that approached were calm, but with the clear heavy-set sound of a boot. Not the minister or one of the interns then. This was somebody new. Maybe they were hoping to visit the Church? The sign on the door had introduced people to them before, though one thing was for sure, evangelism needed to be improved, at least with non-students. Or maybe the individual was like him? There was far too much going on... Joseph spent too long pondering this, so much so that he startled as the man struck up conversation.

The man looked like one of those non-denominational types, jeans, tee-shirt, tattoo sleeves. Trinity-Calvin had a few like that themselves, but the convention was normally more formal. The many students that came were normally that demographic...though Joseph didn't think he'd seen this man before...and he was a bit old for simply being a student, and the question was pretty discerning. Maybe he was one of those mature students? They went to Church right? The man had asked a question! Joseph needed to respond.

>> "You look like you got a lot on your mind son"

This was true. A simple statement, though why a man a few years older than him was calling him son he had no idea. The man was clearly American though, judging by his accent."Whoa,sorry,I'm a little jumpy at the moment. Yes, lot is somewhat of an understatement. What brings you here? I don't think I've seen you here before." Linely's police training had taught him years ago never to judge a book by his cover, while he felt overdressed talking to the man, he gave little indication of it. "Are you here to see the minister?" The police detective offered a hand to the stranger. "I'm Joseph by the way."

The footsteps that approached were calm, but with the clear heavy-set sound of a boot. Not the minister or one of the interns then. This was somebody new. Maybe they were hoping to visit the Church? The sign on the door had introduced people to them before, though one thing was for sure, evangelism needed to be improved, at least with non-students. Or maybe the individual was like him? There was far too much going on... Joseph spent too long pondering this, so much so that he startled as the man struck up conversation.

The man looked like one of those non-denominational types, jeans, tee-shirt, tattoo sleeves. Trinity-Calvin had a few like that themselves, but the convention was normally more formal. The many students that came were normally that demographic...though Joseph didn't think he'd seen this man before...and he was a bit old for simply being a student, and the question was pretty discerning. Maybe he was one of those mature students? They went to Church right? The man had asked a question! Joseph needed to respond.

>> "You look like you got a lot on your mind son"

This was true. A simple statement, though why a man a few years older than him was calling him son he had no idea. The man was clearly American though, judging by his accent."Whoa,sorry,I'm a little jumpy at the moment. Yes, lot is somewhat of an understatement. What brings you here? I don't think I've seen you here before." Linely's police training had taught him years ago never to judge a book by his cover, while he felt overdressed talking to the man, he gave little indication of it. "Are you here to see the minister?" The police detective offered a hand to the stranger. "I'm Joseph by the way."

The man was apparently jostled from his thoughts as Henry spoke. He remarked about having a lot on his mind, Henry could relate. The man introduced himself as Joseph and asked what brought Henry to the church.

"Minster? Oh no. Just kinda found myself here. Was taking a walk to clear my head. Never been here before. Me and the big man tend to have a more "I'll meet you at your place" kind of deal." He chuckled.

"I'll trade my troubles for yours if you care to share. I've heard it helps to talk about stuff. Never found it too helpful myself but who knows." He said.

He shook the man's hand. His grip was firm and Henry felt familiar callus on the man's hand. They came from extensive practice shooting. Henry had them himself.

"Henry," He supplied, "You military?"

Joseph chuckled at Henry's remark. The "Big Man" had a habit of meeting people in the most unexpected of places. Sometimes He even chose to meet people in Churches. "All the same, it is good that you were led here", Joseph remarked. The minister was likely busy with things, the shuffling of books was almost audible from his office. Clearly the women's group was going to take more time than first expected. Understandable, Rebecca (a grad-student) in particular had a habit of asking lots and lots of questions about different aspects of theology.

So he wanted to talk about "troubles" did he? It might be difficult for him to understand was Joseph's first thought. Most civilians didn't get what it was like to be on the front lines, to fear for your life, to potentially be a target for some gang or individual that took exception to the people you testified against in court. This concern was assuaged as soon as Henry took Joseph's hand and shook it. It was a very firm grip, with that all too familiar mark of a man who knew how to use a gun. More still, Linely could feel the many times Henry had fired that gun, the shock of the recoil on his hand when firing a sidearm, or what Joseph assumed to be so. The memory of the first time never faded.

"Police, more precisely a Detective. Mutant Related Crimes, lots of shooting, lots of people trying it on with their mutations. Part of the reason why I'm seeing the Minister today." The assumption of Military could only mean one thing. "Which Military division did you serve in?" This was probably the easiest question to go for, rather than where the man had served. Linely had spoken to enough veterans to know that being able to detect pain was both a blessing and a curse.

"All the same, it is good that you were led here"

Henry gave a tired smile in response. Churches usually held two types of people. The first were those who thought that being at services and participating in church activities made them look good. They were the people you usually saw boasting about all the "Good deeds" they were doing for the Lord without noting much in the way of what he was doing. Thw second were believers. Real true believers who went to church as a way to interact and thank the divine. Joseph seemed to be the second.

He saw the man respond to the handshake much the way Henry had. Analytically and with the understanding of a soldier. Detective huh? And being in the Mutant Crimes Division meant he had probably seen some things.

"Mutants make for tough police work. You either get kids who get a taste for power and think it makes them entitled to do whatever they want, or else your staring down people who should know better but their conscious seemed to be taking a sabbatical." Henry replied.

He'd been a convict when he was a teenager. He knew all too well the kind of crowd Joseph was up against.

"Army. Special Forces." He said in answer to Joseph's questions. "Mostly middle East stuff. Been home for a few months now. Took over the family bakery on twelfth. You've probably had our donuts, we get lots of orders for precincts."

"Believe me the kids that think they know everything because they have telepathic powers...honestly if I had a dollar for every stunned look I get when they find that people can train against that stuff, I'd be a rich man" not to mention the number of kids that didn't know their own strength or sometimes found themselves nearly burning down NYC. Joseph gave a hollow laugh. "Then there's your criminal gangs, mutant serial killers, "M" dealers and of course anti-mutant hate groups." Those were the worst, particularly with this new trend of putting a burning wooden helix outside mutants houses and pro-mutant organisations.

"But you also get genuinely powerful kids that need to be trained, it's why we have the X Men. Had one recently that took Fairy-tale adventures to a new level" Thankfully Haven had been able to deal with her effectively. Too much risk of being arrested under the current climate. "We were able to deal with it though."

So he was special forces? That made a lot of sense really, the army took mutants if they could get them. Probably treated them well too. Particularly if they were good in a fight. "I daresay you found that there are mutants on both sides of those wars" Joseph flatly stated, young mutants were as susceptible to radicalization as the next person, if not more so.

"Ah yes, Turner's Donuts? I love those, particularly your custard ones!" Joseph was suddenly rather enthusiastically shouting...then realised how excited he had become. "Sorry, I just really like those, they're much appreciated, really" he spoke in a lower tone. Turner's were a particular favorite at the Church potlucks as well, when Joseph could get some spare from the precinct, which wasn't often.