((ooc: Continued from “McNulty's Bar”.))

Rupert didn’t remember much of what happened after Stanley had left, when he woke up sprawled over his bed with his shoes still on. Honesty, he didn’t remember much of what happened before that, either. There had been the girl with the ribbon. Then drinks, a conversation, a lot of swearing. A napkin in his pocket.

“There is someplace safe.”

Stray sound bits in his ears. Vague recollections of shouting at the cabbie to pull over, and introducing his drinks to a New York gutter a block from his house. Flipsy yapping happily in greeting. He’d never noticed how loud that poodle-spaniel was, before. She’d woken up the puppy, who’d woken up the ferret, and they probably all watched him stumble over to the kitchen sink. The bathroom had seemed too far.

It was morning now. Nine AM sharp. Sharp like rays of sunlight into his corneas. Rupert adjusted his sunglasses as he stepped through the front doors of the Central Park Precinct. ...Had it always been so noisy in this place?

“Rup,” Officer Jimmy Barnes greeted him from behind the desk, sipping habitually at his orange coffee mug. “Mornin’. You look like Hell.”

“And you sound like a dentist’s drill.” Rupert returned, with a wince. That bought him a laugh. A laugh like a jackhammer.

He wasted no time in entering his office, and closing the sounds of a police force in full hive-mode off with a click of his door. Mercifully, Detective Cassandra Elliot was not present. She’d hardly spoken two words to him since he’d accepted the assignment as camp supervisor for the NYPD. Five words, actually: “I hope you like it.” She was working with another pair of detectives at the moment, until someone else transferred from another unit into the Mercy Task Force. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most popular job on the force. It would be awhile until she got a new partner.

Personally, he had enough concerns of his own. Like why the lights were so bright, even with his glasses. And why that damn cat was sitting on the window sill again. “Scat,” he yelled at it, and winced at his own voice. The cat kept delicately nibbling on a cinnamon donut Cassandra had left out for it. That was probably a sign that the woman herself hadn’t gone far. He’d make this quick, before she joined his list of concerns. Another one: why he’d heard, on his way up here, that Stanley Shepard had been found in a closet one building over from the Sanctuary, handcuffed and gagged with his own boxers. His uniform, and ID, had been taken. Blood tests confirmed that he was the real deal. Which meant that the Stanley Shepard who’d ridden with his partner over to staff the lines at Registration, and who had bought the first round last night, was someone else. Rupert glared at the cat again—it started washing behind its ears—and sat down at his desk. What had once been a looming pile of paperwork was now almost entirely whittled down. The last few months of his life, in report form, was sitting on Captain Cynthia Myer’s desk. Only a few stray cases remained. The Sanctuary Police Massacre. Various incidents starring the red-headed twins. Others. Already, the Registration Act was helping to close those. It was a good thing. The girl with the ribbon had been braceleted and shipped off to Hell. Also a good thing.

So had Raina.

He rubbed at his temples, and tried not to think about the scribbled-upon napkin in his pocket. His head hurt enough as it was, without the help of Stanley Shepard. Or whoever the hell that had really been.

“Ever heard of Doppelgangers, cat?” He asked over his shoulder. It was grooming its butt. Attractive. “Didn’t think so.”

A human-copier. That’s exactly what they needed in the world. Rupert scrawled a few finishing touches on the remaining reports, and thought that a human-copier was just the sort of thing the camps lacked. One more liar with a collar to complete the government’s collection.

“So if you're serious about what you just said, if you're not just blowing smoke, you may get your chance to do 'something that matters'.”

This was not the sort of thinking a man with a hangover should be doing. He started at the camps, officially, tomorrow. That gave him plenty of time to sleep this off. Not enough time to think things through, though. He wondered, cynically, if there would ever be enough time. Or was he just going to have to make a damn decision, and live with the consequences? Because that sort of thing had been going real well for him, lately.

He finished one report, and moved on.

((ooc: Phone call from “(infirmary thread) Gwendolyn’s Side of the Camp”.))

Rupert had just finished the last of his reports. Finished. Finito. Blessedly complete. It was a strangely hollow and vindicated feeling, at the same time. His life as a Detective was neatly wrapped up and complete. The path to his life as a camp supervisor was all clear, and ready for him to walk it.

The sound of his desk phone ringing hit his lingering headache like a hornet’s stinger through his skull. He picked it up, well aware that anyone whose opinion he cared about would have just called his cell. “Detective Kelley. Who’s this?”

“Hello, this is Gwendolyn Delray, at the camps—”

The camps. Great. That’s just who he wanted to hear from. “I’m not on duty until tomorrow.”

“Yes, I know. Listen, Detective Kelley—”

“Can’t this wait? I’m rather busy over here.” This woman’s high-strung voice was not helping his head, and a little white lie had saved many a morning sufferer before him.

“Detective Kelley, I am calling on behalf of Raina.”

Rupert’s breath caught in his throat. He had to swallow before he could speak. Raina. The Ice Queen. The lying mutant bitch. “Do your superiors know that you’re making calls on behalf of the freaks?” The words felt stale coming out of his mouth. Yes, he realized how stupid he sounded. He ran a hand through his hair—why did he always go with his first reaction? Why couldn’t he just give himself a second to think?

“Detective Kelley, Raina has just had a miscarriage.”

One second.

...Two seconds.

......Three seconds.

He wasn’t using the time to think. He was using it to remember how to breathe. There was a pain in his chest. A dislocated thought flitted through his mind: I’m having a heart attack. He would be so lucky.

The phone dropped out of his hand, jangling back onto its receiver by sheer chance. He made it to the bathroom, just barely.

“Wow, Rup,” one of the beat officers said, sticking his head in the bathroom door. “You must have had a fun night.” He laughed, and retreated back into the hallway as Rupert flicked him off.

A miscarriage. Raina had a miscarriage.

He’d had a baby. The thought filled him with an unexpectedly warm glow.

He’d had a baby with Raina, and now it was dead.

The glow left pretty damn quickly, joining the rest of his breakfast. Rupert knelt on the floor with his head over a toilet in the men’s room of the Central Park Precinct, and realized something: I’m not cut out to be a father. The thought didn’t help anything. It took him a long while to pick himself back up.

“There is someplace safe.”

He washed out his mouth, and splashed water on his face.

“So if you're serious about what you just said, if you're not just blowing smoke, you may get your chance to do 'something that matters'.”

He turned in the rest of his paperwork, and unlocked the driver’s side door of his car.

“That's their symbol... the Mutant Sisterhood. You just, um, go to the camps and wait. Do your job, don't do anything stupid. They'll send someone to contact you.”

Do his job. Right. Don’t do anything stupid. Easily said. Raina was in a concentration camp, and he’d put her there. She’d had a baby and lost it, and that was his damn fault, too. He couldn’t fix any of that.

There was something he could do, though. He could do his job. He could be the asshole that he always was, and fit right in with the rest of the camp workers. He could make it so that when he got her out of there, no one—no one—saw it coming. Because if he was at all representative of the rest of humanity, then mutants deserved to be in control. Let this ‘Mutant Sisterhood’ use him as their tool. It was all he was good for.