grace, too

Pairing: Tim Bayliss (Homicide: Life on the Street)/Billy Tallent (Hard Core Logo)

Notes: This is, in fact, a remix of the first fanfiction I ever wrote, a behemoth of a series called Going Under, which I started in early 2001. If you've read Going Under, some of this will be familiar, although some of it won't. Some of the characters are the same, but a lot of them, even those with familiar names, are different from the original version.

See, it all started when Big Love started airing on HBO. That led me to reread Under the Banner of Heaven. And then I got out the zine copies of Going Under and looked at those. And winced at, as I said in an LJ post at the time, the "big pile of schmoopish dreck."

I wrote this long (locked, because of a lot of personal stuff) LJ post about writing GU and my writing insecurities and what was going on in my personal life when I started GU, and how I had more of a critical eye when I write now than I did when I wrote GU, and other stuff. And at the very end, the very last sentence, I wrote: "Even if now I've got this strange compulsion to start it all over again, only make it better." That was on April 2, 2006. Later that day I posted again, saying it might be nuts, but I'd just written 1500 words of a remix of Going Under. By the next day I was up to 3000.

I kept going. Nearly 66,000 words and several drafts later, I finally stopped.

The prologue starts directly after the Homicide movie. Part one starts in August 2002, approximately two years later, seven years after Hard Core Logo.

I agonized over when to start it, actually. I knew I wanted it to be after 9/11--see, when I wrote GU, I started it in early 2001, and the timeline of the story included the fall of 2001. Which then didn't make sense when 9/11 happened. It bothered me. I think I avoided writing stories in the future as much as I could after that, although of course I couldn't help but do it in the GU universe.

The story contains spoilers for the whole run of Homicide, including the movie, and for Hard Core Logo.

Soundtrack: The Tragically Hip, especially Day for Night. The songs from the epigraphs are: "Inevitability of Death," "Daredevil," and "grace, too" from Day for Night; "Toronto #4" from Music@Work; and "Summer's Killing Us" and "You are Everywhere" from In Between Evolution.

At some point, the Hip just became the soundtrack for the Tim Bayliss in my head, I think around the time I was writing Six Paramitas. These days I can't write Tim without their music. I have a "writing" playlist on my iPod that includes massive amounts of the Hip, although it's also got a lot of other stuff, and I had that playlist playing whenever I was writing. I also had Day for Night in my car's cd player for months and months.

Cheerleaders: Panisdead, Kageygirl, Cathexys, The Wild Mole, Cocoajava, Dine.

Ah, the lucky people on my remix filter. I decided early on that I couldn't do beta until the thing was finished, because otherwise I would never finish (which has happened to me on other stories), but I still needed to share what I was working on and get some encouragement. These folks provided it.

Beta: Cocoajava, Panisdead, The Wild Mole; bonus help from The Amused One.

I had different betas for different things. Cocoajava and TWM read through things first and then again at the end; they were great at nitpicky stuff. Panisdead read through things slowly (very slowly at times, although I tried my best to be patient) and gave me a ton of notes and made my life living hell frequently, albeit in a good way for the story. All three of them made the story better. And theamusedone gave me feedback on some stuff on Salt Lake City that I totally appreciated, although I didn't change as much as I should have.

grace, too

by shell

now you'll have to tell me when

tell me when it's imminent

so you won't have to rise and fall alone

or endure the wonder of survival

alone.

I agonized over where to put which quote from which song, changing things all over the place. Panisdead tells me she doesn't even read such things in stories, even ones she's betaing, so I don't know if anyone cares, but, yeah. The Hip, man. This one's Toronto #4.

Prologue

This prologue maybe doesn't make much sense if you haven't seen all of Homicide, and I know at least one person who recced the story said to skip it if you don't know the canon, but if you do know the canon, you know why I had to put it in here. Of course, if you know the canon you may wonder why I don't deal much with the Luke Ryland thing in the rest of the story. In a way the whole story is about not dealing with it, because my conception of Bayliss as a character is that he is suffering from major depression and that killing Ryland was a suicidal gesture, as was his confession to Frank.

The prologue may not make that much sense to people unfamiliar with Homicide, but what sense it does make is thanks to P, who made me tighten it up considerably. I must quote her:

I'd really suggest shaking it up to start with more of a hook. Emotional exhaustion might be realistic for the characters at that point in time, but it's hard to engage with with no warm up. You throw that at ME right off the bat, I'm going to close your story and go look for tentacle porn.

Yes, that's right, my own beta told me my beloved story made her want to read tentacle porn. And she's my friend, or so she claims.

Unfortunately, she was also right, which is why the story has a completely different opening line now.

It's not every day you confess to murder. Ha! That's a hook! That's got to be the hard part, telling someone. Telling Frank. That part's done--the rest isn't important, not worth caring about. It'll all be over soon. All I have to do is wait.

I let everything go. I feel nothing as we walk into the squad room, less than nothing as I write Ryland's name on the Board, another solved case for Lewis. I'm tired, that's all.

This would be the first time I mention Tim feeling nothing, feeling tired. It won't be the last. Nor would it be the first time I mention that all he has to do is wait, as I did in the first paragraph.

Then Naomi comes over to us, her face streaked with tears, and tells us Gee is dead.

I drop the marker, stunned. I put my hand on her shoulder reflexively, my eyes stinging.

Frank slowly shakes his head, his eyes tightly shut, but then I see him put it away into whatever place he puts anything or anyone that he considers a distraction. Nothing else matters when he's got a murder to put down.

I, uh, have some issues with Frank Pembleton, especially the way he behaved during his absence from the show and during the movie. Just so you know.

"Okay," he says, turning to me. "How are we gonna do this?"

I shake my head, lost. "I don't know, Frank--you tell me."

He grabs my arm and pulls me into the aquarium. "No, you tell me, you son of a bitch," he hisses. "'You take me in, Frank--who else?' That's what you said."

I push him away. "Gee is dead, Frank. He's dead." I try to let it all go again, but I can't. His death means something--it has to.

Tim is searching for some meaning in his life. He's lost, ready to die, but something about Gee's death gets to him, gets to him enough that he makes an effort to keep living.

"You'll talk to Lewis," Frank says. "He's primary. I take you in, yes, but you have to talk to Lewis. It's procedure."

"You want me to talk to Lewis tonight? After what just happened?" I ask. Frank once told me he'd give anything for a murder that made sense. None of this makes any sense anymore. Maybe it never did.

Frank waits, but he won't look me in the eye.

"Fine, Frank, we'll talk to Lewis," I say wearily. Wearily, because he's tired of everything--depression completely saps your energy for everything. "We'll go, you and I, we'll go into the Box, and you call Meldrick over, and we'll talk to him."

A couple of the female detectives from the second shift are sitting in one of the interview rooms already, some tissues and a couple cups of coffee on the table. Frank opens the door of the second room and ushers me inside.

I see him looking at the cuffs on the table. I sit down. I've never sat on this side of the table before. It doesn't feel that different.

I realized after I posted this that he has sat on that side, during the scenes Brodie filmed for the documentary. Ah well--it's still a nice line.

Frank turns around and leaves. I can see him through the glass a few minutes later, making a phone call, probably to Lewis.

Naomi sticks her head through the door. "You okay, Tim? You need anything? Some tissues?"

I shake my head. "No, thanks."

"When do you think the service will be?" she asks, tearing up. "I don't--I'm supposed to leave on Monday. I'm going on a cruise. I don't want to miss the service, but it's too late to get a refund. Do you think they'll have the service before Monday?"

"Probably," I answer, considering. "Wouldn't they want to do it on the weekend, if they can? Have a, a mass?" They should have a mass for Gee, one of those long requiems with Latin and kneeling and communion for Catholics only.

That would be a little canon nod to a conversation Tim and Frank have early in the series, I think during the white glove murders, where Frank is appalled that Tim took communion in a Catholic church once because he didn't realize he wasn't allowed. And a little dig at Frank, because Tim's pissed at Frank, too, even if he isn't as aware of it as I am.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Naomi answers, relieved. "I guess I'll see you there."

"Uh, yeah, yeah, sure," I say awkwardly. I won't be there. I'll be in jail. They'll take me to processing tonight, or maybe I'll spend the night in the Box, waiting for the State's Attorney and the public defender Lewis will insist upon to iron out the details. Either way, I won't be at Gee's funeral.

It's just sinking in for Tim, what he's done and what the real consequences are.

"It's good to see you back, Bayliss," she says, coming over to the table. She gives me a quick hug. "We've missed you around here--it's not the same without you."

"Thanks, Naomi," I say, hugging her back. It's not just the funeral. I doubt Danvers is going to want me to testify at the trial, not now. He'll have Frank's testimony, but Frank's not a cop, not anymore. Danvers needs me to testify. I was the only detective who heard James confess to shooting Gee--to killing him. I'm the arresting officer--that's on me.

And that's the thing--if he goes ahead with his plan to commit suicide by Jessop (because he knows, even if he doesn't let himself know it consciously, that going to prison is just a more passive way of killing himself than eating his gun), Gee's killer may go free, just like Luke Ryland did.

"Okay, well, I'm going to go home," Naomi says, sniffling. "I'll see you later."

"Sure. Take care," I reply, distracted. She hugs me again and leaves.

Frank walks in carrying a case file and the Miranda paperwork. I don't have to look at the lettering on the top of the file to know it's Ryland's. He drops it on the table casually.

"Lewis'll be here in a minute," he says, gazing out the window.

"When do you think the funeral will be, Frank?" I ask him.

"What?" he says, startled into looking at me.

"The funeral. Gee's funeral. I told Naomi I thought probably this weekend, but you're Catholic, you'd know better than me."

"Uh, yeah, they'll probably do it Saturday or Sunday," he says. "Should be a regular media circus--I think I'll pass."

"What?" I shouldn't be surprised.

"I'll remember Gee in my own way," he says dismissively. "I don't need to be there."

"What the hell do you mean, you don't need to be there?" I say. Something snaps inside me, and the vague feelings of regret I've been ignoring turn into fury.

I'm going to repeat that sort of phrase later, which is maybe annoying, but at the same time I see Tim as someone who's depressed, detached, and out of touch with his feelings, until someone or something happens that jars something loose--and what jars loose is usually anger, because underneath it all, Tim Bayliss is very, very angry. It's just that he's usually most angry at himself.

"Look, here comes Lewis," he says, ignoring me. "You know how you're going to play this?"

"How I'm going to--Crosetti was one thing, Frank, but come on, this is Gee we're talking about," I exclaim.

Lewis comes in. "What's this about Crosetti and Gee?"

"Nothing," Frank says, annoyed.

"He's not going, Meldrick," I say. "Frank's passing on Gee's funeral."

"You pulling this shit again?" Lewis asks, disgusted. "What the fuck do you mean, you're not going?"

Yeah, missing Crosetti's funeral was different, maybe understandable, and we've all forgiven Frank for it, because we saw him standing in his dress blues on the steps, saluting, but I can see him deciding to miss Gee's funeral for personal reasons--he wants to grieve the man in his own way, and he doesn't want to be around people, not after everything that's happened--but Lewis and Bayliss, they're not going to understand.

"I'm not going," Frank says simply. "The church will be crawling with media, politicians, sycophants. I'll pray for Al Giardello on my own time, in my own way."

Meldrick looks at me, frowning. Then he glances at the file on the table. He looks at Frank, his eyebrows raised.

There are a lot of times in canon where there are two different conversations going on at the same time. Usually it's Tim talking to Frank about one thing, while Frank's talking to Tim about something completely different, but it works with these three in this situation as well.

"I never went to Roshi Felder's funeral," I say to Meldrick.

"You didn't?" he asks, turning towards me. "Why not? You knew the guy."

"I don't know," I say, shaking my head. "I should have gone."

"Who's this Roshi Felder?" Frank asks. "He have something to do with Ryland?"

"I'd definitely regret missing Gee's funeral," I say.

"Well, it's a little late for regrets, Tim," Frank says.

I really like this little bit, how I'm referencing something that is so significant for Tim, something that Lewis knows about, that Frank is completely clueless about. Does Frank even know Tim started practicing Buddhism? He sure as hell doesn't know about Tim shooting Larry Moss. But Lewis does. Lewis knows why Tim's bringing up Felder's funeral, but Frank is just lost, without any idea of the incredible significance it had that Tim, who went to Adena Watson's funeral, who cried over her a full four years after her death, chose not to attend the funeral of a Buddhist monk he actually knew, whose killer he caught and killed.

Lewis stares at the two of us. He looks at the file on the table, frowning.

"Someone mind telling me what the fuck is going on?" he says, pointing at the Board. "It's not that I don't appreciate you two solving the Yin-Yang Harding murder for me, but did this James cat confess to killing Ryland, too?"

Itπs not easy to try to capture Lewis' speech patterns.

"Eric Thomas James didn't kill Luke Ryland," Frank says quietly, looking at me.

Lewis looks at the two of us again. He looks at the file, at the paperwork. He looks at me. He shakes his head.

"Oh, no, no, no, Frank," he says. "No. We are not doing this, do you hear me?"

"Not doing what? Last I heard, you were a homicide detective, the primary on Ryland," Frank says derisively. "Last I heard, the primary should take part in all interviews of a suspect."

"You down with this, Tim?" Lewis asks me. "This your idea of some sick joke?"

"It's no joke, Lewis," Frank says. "Bayliss told me--"

"Shut up, Frank. You just shut the fuck up for a minute," Lewis says, holding his hand up, his eyes still on me. "You got something to say to me, Bayliss? Because either you say something right now, or I'm going to forget all about this. I think I'll just go ahead and take Ryland's name off the Board completely--I doubt anyone would notice, especially tonight."

"You know, I don't want to miss Gee's funeral," I say, wondering how things could have changed so quickly. "I should be there, don't you think?" I ask Lewis.

Lewis answers without hesitation. "Absolutely."

"Are you kidding me?" Frank asks. "Meldrick, he confessed!"

"To you?" Lewis asks.

"Yes," Frank answers.

"That there is what you call hearsay," Lewis says to me. "Not admissible, Frank not being a police any more."

I nod. "Yeah, I know."

"You know something else?" Lewis says. "Luke Ryland, that was a death penalty case. The bastard would have died anyway if they hadn't fucked up and let him go."

"He was a predator," I say, wanting that to be enough, knowing it's not. "A serial killer."

"It was just a matter of time before he did it again," Lewis agrees. "I meet his killer on the street, I'd be as happy to shake his hand as to arrest him. That sick son of a bitch Ryland deserved to die."

I may be pushing my Lewis characterization a little here, but maybe not. He did go along with Kellerman's shooting of Luther Mahoney until he couldn't any longer, and he did help Felton get his friend off for killing his father in that mercy killing. Despite the problems he's had with Tim over the years, Tim's been his partner in the Waterfront, and I do believe him in Zen and the Art of Murder when he tells Tim he thinks he's a good cop. Also, I think Lewis, like Munch, believes that there are times when you've got to do something a little hinky in order to protect and serve.

Plus, you know, I couldn't have Tim going undercover for the FBI if he were in jail for murder.

"I thought better of you than this, detective," Frank says, looking at Lewis.

"You can think whatever you want, Frank," Lewis says. "All I know is, we lost one of our own tonight. I ain't ready to lose another, especially not over a scumwad like Luke Ryland."

That, I think, is what makes me able to believe this of Lewis, beyond the necessity of making him do this for the sake of the story. They just lost Gee, and Lewis, who lost Crosetti to suicide and nearly lost Kellerman to suicide, has got to see (more clearly than Frank, especially given Frank's absence over the last year and a half) that Bayliss in prison equals Bayliss killing himself. Lewis is not willing to let that happen.

"Screw you, Lewis. Screw both of you," Frank says. He walks out of the Box, slamming the door behind him.

"You okay?" Lewis asks me.

I shake my head. "Not even close," I answer, getting up and following him out of the room.

Part One

He said I'm fabulously rich

C'mon just lets go

I come from downtown

Born ready for you

That would be from the title song, grace, too, which I love, despite the grammatical errors in the lyric sheet. The next lines are "She kinda bit her lip/Geez, I don't know," but the gender's all wrong, so I ignored them.

I never thought I'd leave Baltimore, but I've done a lot of things I never thought I'd do. Joining the FBI seemed like a better idea than most, and if I ended up working out of the Las Vegas office, so be it. It's certainly better than the alternative. I try not to remember I ever considered anything else; looking at the view out my office window helps me forget.

Tim leaving Baltimore and joining the FBI is all about trying to forget--to forget Ryland, to forget Frank, to forget everything he thinks he's fucked up. The way I think of Tim, he's very, very good at forgetting, or at least pushing to the back of his mind, what he doesn't want to think about. He's had lots of practice, ever since he was a little boy being abused by his uncle. He's had so much practice that he can even manage to not consciously think about the fact that he's still suicidally depressed.

After two years of pushing paper and taking MBA classes at UNLV part-time, I've finally wrangled an assignment that means something. No one, including Ed Bartlett, the senior agent heading up the investigation, knows for sure how many children are affected by what goes on in the most secretive of dozens of Mormon fundamentalist groups--the last agent who did any real leg work left notes saying he thought it was probably hundreds.

That last agent who worked on the case? Is dead. He was murdered by the UBCC. Not that Tim is thinking about that, because he's not. But it's there in his mind, even if he refuses to consciously acknowledge it.

Volunteering for Church Canyon is the closest I felt to speaking for the dead since I joined the FBI--it's a job where I can make a difference. And a job where he's got a good chance of ending up dead, possibly even while saving some kids--maybe a chance at the absolution Frank wouldn't give him.

Even if only one fourteen year old girl is taken away from her family and given to a rapist, that's too many, but Bartlett was too chickenshit to really dig into it until I pushed him. The guy's a hump, shuffled off into Domestic Terrorism to spend his last couple years before he qualifies for his pension, heading up an area no one cares about anymore, not since last September, anyway. The Bureau's officially forgotten about Oklahoma City and Waco these days, and anyone who wants to move up the ranks has no time for that kind of domestic bullshit.

When I first started writing GU, Oklahoma City and Waco were still in the nation's consciousness, much more than they were a few months later, or are still, even now. I liked being able to make it, in this story, a neglected case in a practically forgotten area of the bureau, managed by the guy no one cares about. It seemed the perfect place for Tim to have gotten himself, because he had the glory of Homicide before, and now he's just drifting, or was, until he found this particular case.

Me, I don't have much interest in fame and glory. Bartlett's a hump, yes, but he's willing to let me do what I can with this one neglected case, as long as I don't make too much work for him. Which is why I'll be leaving soon, heading east to the Arizona strip, posing as a fundamentalist who believes in the Angel Moroni, the Supremacy of the White Race, and the Holy Principle of Plural Marriage. It's all so I can make my way behind the walled compound in southern Utah known as the United Brethren of Church Canyon, led by the so-called Prophet Gideon Asher Hancock.

UBCC is based fairly obviously on the FLDS of Short Creek (Hilldale/Colorado City), but with just a little tweaking. Seriously, there's not that much difference between Rulon or Warren Jeffs and Gideon Hancock. It's pretty fucking scary.

And, yeah, for those of you who don't know, the geographical location of Church Canyon is based on Church Wells, UT, which is just beyond Big Water, UT, where I lived for a year and a half while working in Page, AZ. Big Water's a polyg town, although the cult that runs it isn't nearly as scary as the FLDS. And, yeah, they left me alone when I lived there, although my landlord was seriously fucked up--fortunately he lived in California, as he'd had this huge feud with the mayor/head of the Big Water polygs.

I'm in Salt Lake City now. I've been in town for a few weeks, staying in an Embassy Suites, living out of suitcases. It's a strange city, stranger than Vegas. Salt Lake is where boys from polygamist cults get tossed out like garbage when they're teenagers. Can't have any competition for the girls, after all. Some end up selling themselves--I never knew there were working girls or hustlers here, but I guess even the capitol city of the Latter Day Saints has some sinners.

Some of the kids dumped here will eventually make it on their own and may even return home, but not many, especially if they're from UBCC--the Bureau suspects boys from that particular town tend to get a little rougher treatment than merely getting tossed out a truck when they hit fourteen or fifteen. Not that we know for sure.

They tell me Salt Lake is as close as it gets to normal urban life in the state, with a sizeable minority of Gentiles, as the Mormons call garden variety Christians. No one asks anyone what they believe on certain streets, anyway, as long as they can pay. Tonight I'm in Rose Park, the closest thing here to a slum, looking for a kid supposedly named Eli, supposedly nineteen, who supposedly has information I need. That's if I can trust the background I was provided with when I agreed to take this assignment, which so far hasn't exactly been reliable.

I did some research on SLC before I picked Rose Park, including talking to theamusedone, but I'm still not super confident of the accuracy of this bit. I could have tried to do more with it, but to tell the truth I was more focused on other bits of the story.

The Rose Park neighborhood feels more familiar than any place I've been in the past couple years. I see corner boys slinging dope, pass boarded up rowhouses, see more brown faces than white, and hear hip-hop, in both English and Spanish, coming out of the beat up cars. Near Rosewood Park, there's a different type of corner boy. None of them are dressed in drag, and there are fewer than in Baltimore, but they've got the look--hungry, cold, and desperate. I only hope there's no Peter Fields among them.

I'm not completely happy with the whole section with Eli here. I did my best with it, and I think it's better than the original conception of the character, but I'm not sure it works.

I see the kid before he sees me. He's blond, too thin, and looks more like fifteen than nineteen. He's got a faded Jenifur t-shirt on over his tight cut-offs. He's shivering a bit--it's summer, but it still cools off quickly at night.

"You're a Jenifur fan, huh?" I ask him. That's supposed to be the signal.

"I'm a fan of tall men," he answers, looking up at me flirtatiously.

So am I, Eli. So am I.

"Tall men who want a good time. You want a good time?"

"You going to the concert tomorrow night?" I ask pointedly. "I hear Jenifur's a good time."

His shoulders drop. "Yeah," he says. "So you're the guy, huh?"

I nod. "Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

He follows me to a nearby diner, one that looks clean enough, with an appetizing mixture of smells wafting out the door. We sit at booth in the far corner of the nearly empty restaurant, and I tell him to order whatever he wants. "You sure?" he asks warily, but he must believe me, because he orders enough for three people.

We spend a few hours there. He tells me to talk to Heather, a young woman who escaped from the polygamists in Short Creek and formed an ad hoc network of runaways in Salt Lake City. He says she helped him out of Church Canyon; he's not sure, but he thinks she's still in contact with someone there. I make a note of her name and number--I'll have to give it to Bartlett.

I'm also not completely sure the whole underground railroad thing works. I left it deliberately vague--Tim doesn't really find out that much about it, not as much as Bill learns, later on, which makes some sense given the story but is also because I knew the idea that there was this secret tunnel underneath the wall was hand-wavey.

I drink several cups of coffee, listening and taking notes, hearing what he's saying but not reacting to it, like it's just another interview of a suspect. The less I react, the more he tells me, so I guess it works as an interview technique.

He shovels food in, talking between bites. I figure his last meal was a while ago--I'll slip him some extra money when we're done. He tells me even more than I suspected about the psychopathic Prophet Gideon and his band of polygamist thugs. They sound like something out of a horror movie, but I get the feeling he's not really exaggerating. I wonder vaguely how the hell I'm going to survive this assignment.

Yeah, wonders vaguely because he's not willing or able to look at it too closely without acknowledging his secondary motivation in taking this case.

I try to persuade Eli to come back to the hotel, tell him I'll pay for a room for him, but he refuses, says he's got to go, gesturing at the street. I give him the envelope I got from Bartlett plus all the cash in my wallet. I wish I had a spare jacket to give him.

"You give me this much, you're entitled to more than talk, you know," he says, looking at me appraisingly. "Or did you mean I should stay in your hotel room?"

One thing Tim Bayliss is never, ever, going to do, IMO, is anything even close to a sexual encounter with someone significantly younger than he is. Not with what happened with his uncle.

"You're entitled to more than this kind of life," I tell him, exhausted despite the caffeine. "We could get you into a foster home, get you back to school. It's not safe out there."

"I'm in