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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 10, 2010 17:46:05 GMT -5
"I know we will, I trust you," she said, squeezing his hands in return.
Even though all this was insane, and by all rights, she should be somewhere else right now, safely back on the Venia, or chilling out with Casey back at her apartment, for better or for worse, she had chosen Hugo, and she would stand by that choice.
"I love you," she said, casting her eyes down for a moment before she said the words, her eyes meeting his as she spoke, "we'll stick by you, and we'll figure some way out of this."
She knew they would.
Casey shifted again - she'd always been a restless sleeper, even when she was younger - so Darcy slid back into her seat, her hands slipping from Hugo's embrace, taking her daughter's hand. Casey head found her shoulder again, and she rested her head upon Casey's, watching Hugo with a soft gaze as her mind drifted.
It was nice being this comfortable with someone.
Being in love.
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 10, 2010 18:14:58 GMT -5
Hugo hadn't heard that phrase from anyone other than his daughter in quite a number of years, so it was odd to have it go through his ears. Then again, he wasn't complaining; he had her. That's all that mattered(except of course the child who was now talking in her sleep about rabbits. Her favorite animal.) to him at this point. He gave her a smile and responded:
"I know baby. Oh I know." He kissed her hands once more before she withdrew them from his, the detective now making sure Lisa was ok(oh yeah, she was fine) before looking out the window for a few moments, then back to Darcy, whose gaze was fixed on him. He gave her a small smile before reclining his head back on the seat, eyes closing.
Hugo could hear Lisa saying:
"Daaad! Come on! We're gonna be late!"
The detective groaned slightly before opening his eyes reluctantly...
"What baby?"
"We're heeeeere." Hugo's senses were then put back on full alert. They needed to move.
"Thank you for waking me up."
It was still busy at one o clock in the morning, the late night crowd trying to push the limit for purchasing a ticket to a late night party in Sacramento or past the border into Mexico(very popular destination), so they could attempt to blend in. Hugo brought Darcy close to him with his free arm(his other carrying a small duffel bag with belongings) gently and told her:
"I want you to take Casey and Lisa out of the north entrance, which is just ahead of us. Take the fifty five transport to Rodeo boulevard. Once you get to Rodeo, I'll come get you from there." Knowing Darcy would want an explanation for his sudden disappearance, he followed up his previous statement with:
"Just trust me. Please."
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 10, 2010 18:37:59 GMT -5
Darcy had been the only one awake the whole journey. Once she'd settled her head upon Casey's, the girl had settled for a long while, almost until they'd pulled into the station. Hugo was out as well, and Lisa stayed fast asleep.
As the train had begun to ease into the platform, the change in speed had woken the girls, and Lisa had determindly set about waking her Dad. Darcy left her to it, making sure they had all of their belongings.
"Okay," she agreed as he pulled her close and instructed her on what to do next, she would try going on faith for once. Hopefully she would be rewarded with him turning up, as promised, and unharmed.
"Stay safe."
It was probably a diversion, he wanted to take the heat off them as a group and deal with it himself, hopefully securing their safety. Hopefully, the three of them wouldn't be followed.
That's what she thought anyway.
Slinging her bag so it was secure over her shoulder, she took one of each of the girl's hands in hers and did as she had been told. North entrance, fifty five, Rodeo boulevard.
Standing in the street, she didn't exactly feel safe. It was quieter than she would have expected it to be in LA at this time, she felt like they were exposed.
"What's going on?" Casey asked quietly.
"We're waiting for Hugo, then we'll get out of here."
"I don't like the way that guy is eyeing us."
"We won't have to wait much longer. And believe me, if he tries anything, he'll get something that he won't expect, and leave much less of a man than when he started."
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 10, 2010 19:07:55 GMT -5
Hugo knew it was a risk to send those three into the middle of downtown L.A., but Rodeo drive would be safe, considering it was in the more upper class division of the city. The detective told Lisa she would be going with Darcy and willingly complied(she was understanding very quickly that Darceeee was becoming a very important part of her life.). He watched them leave the station, then began his work.
It didn't take Hugo long to find the three of them, seeing as they were the only three there. He leaned up against a building across the street from the trio, smirking at their glances of curiosity/bewilderment at the medium sized African American male who stared back at them. The African American crossed the street, now reaching into his front pocket and pressing a small button-looking device that completely transformed the man's face into a familiar one.
"Follow me. Close."
Hugo led the trio south on Rodeo, turning left after three blocks, arriving at a very well to-do neighborhood. The homes were a shout-out to the traditions of their ancestors back in the 2200's: very old school architecture, almost no metal visible. They passed a few homes before Hugo guided them onto the property of the fourth house they saw. It was a beautiful two story home that had a garage(He would have to teach Lisa what that was) and an old porch swing close to the front door. Hugo walked up to the entrance and was greeted by the usual barrage of ID tactics: foot scan, retinal scan, facial scan, fingerprint scan, body heat register, blood type, everything. All within a few micro seconds, all done by invisible beams of light that proceeded out of the house. The door opened.
"Welcome home, Detective."
"Thank you, Claire." He brought the trio inside, the door closing behind them. The interior certainly did not match the exterior's beauty.
There were a few chairs littered around the large "living" area, in the center of which contained four holographic projections, two on each side of the area. Each holo had some kind of information on it, whether it be criminal records, security around the house, or the local news. Further back, there was a small kitchen visible, then another hallway that broke off.
"It doesn't look like much, but this is the best you're going to get."
"I take that as an insult." a woman's voice chimed.
"Sorry, Claire. You know I love you."
"Phrase does not compute." Hugo chuckled, saying:
"That's the V.I., Claire. Designed after the wife of the guy who built our safehouses."
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 11, 2010 5:08:35 GMT -5
The house was the sort of house that, as a child, Darcy had imagined owning when she grew up, the little girl's dream house. One that she would get married in and raise a family in someday. It was beautiful.
Porch swing, she loved those things.
The biometric testing at the door was extensive, the house had certainly been designed with security in mind.
The inside of the house left something to be desired, but hopefully they wouldn't be here long. With Hugo and Darcy being as clever as they were, they'd think of some way out of this in no time.
"How many houses are there like this?" Casey piped up, curious. She felt a little safer now they were safely tucked away inside a house with the most elaborate security sequence she'd ever seen on a door. "Do they make them for the LAPD in general or what...?"
While Casey started asking questions, Darcy made her way through to the kitchen, locating a glass in the cupboard. Wiping the dust off it with her sleeve, she poured herself a glass of water from the sink, and stared out the back window quietly, just thinking.
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 11, 2010 18:11:56 GMT -5
Lisa followed Darcy into the kitchen and asked politely:
"Darceeee, could you get me a glass of water tooo? I've been soo thirsty." She looked outside to the small yard and for a brief moment, wanted to go back home. Dad could take me home, leave me away for a while, I could do it..
"Hey Darceee, have you ever wanted to go away? Like, go away from EVERYONE and just play by yourself?" It was evident the girl was becoming a bit troubled by all the events surrounding her. There was, however, a positive: Lisa was beginning to trust Darcy.
Hugo responded to Casey's question as he walked over to the holo's, adjusting some of the images with his hands:
"There are several, all scattered throughout LA. We all get assigned one safe-house, none of us knowing where the others are. Safety procedure for all LAPD detectives and under cover personnel. The boys in blue don't get these things, but they get the heavy guns." He raised his eyebrows at one of the news vids, which was proclaiming that there was "new evidence" in the cases up in Jefferson County. Which is where Boston was located.
"New" evidence? What could possibly be exhumed? The reporter(this was a pre-recorded vid) promised more details as the days followed. Hugo could only shake his head, now looking at Casey, realizing that she too should NOT have been here.
"I'm sorry you had to get entangled in all this."
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 11, 2010 18:27:06 GMT -5
Darcy blinked down at Lisa, having not realised she was there until she piped up, asking for a glass of water.
"Of course you can, sweetheart," she smiled, lifting Lisa up and sitting her on the counter while she retrieved another dusty glass from the cupboard. She cleaned it, filled it up and handed it to Lisa before answering the girl's other question.
"Hmm," she mused out loud, "sometimes, when things have been a bit rough. But I've found that it doesn't really help," she said, "what actually helped was being close to my family and friends, people I could depend on for support and love." She had a vague idea where Lisa's thoughts were leading her, although it was impossible to be sure with a girl of her age.
Casey nodded quietly, looking at the holos herself. She still wasn't quite sure what was going on exactly, but she would no doubt get to quiz Dee on it a little later, have her fill her in.
"Oh, it's okay," Casey said with a wave of her hand, "it's not like we can turn back now, right?"
She glanced towards the kitchen area where she could hear chatter, then looked back at Hugo. There was something she'd noticed that she'd wanted to ask Dee, but seeing as Hugo was here now...
"Are you and Dee... did something happen at the bar earlier?"
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 11, 2010 20:04:11 GMT -5
"I didn't have many friends in school you know. They said I was weird. There were a few though. There was one girl who had a dot on her forehead and talked funny, but she was nice. But you're way nicer than she was." She drank the water greedily, allowing her level of thirst to show. After setting the glass down on the counter(she tried to to put it on the counter as casually as possible, not wanting Darcy to notice how she had to get on her tip toes to REACH the counter), she resumed staring out the window. A thought then flickered across her mind:
"Will you and Dad get married?" Woah.
Hugo resumed playing the holos, getting them to where they needed to be. Then he heard the question. Oh boy.
"You want the honest truth? Of course you do." He had two screens up with files open on the old case from Boston, another which fed into the security around the home, and the final one on the news. With all that set, he looked at Casey and said a simple answer:
"Yes."
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 14, 2010 4:33:37 GMT -5
It was a good thing that Lisa was chattering away to her, not that Lisa had any misgivings about her in the first place, but it seemed to be a sign of trust.
The marriage question caught her off guard, and it was a good thing she wasn't drinking her water at the time otherwise she probably would have spit-sprayed it everywhere. That would have been really good.
So that she didn't 'uh' or 'um' too much, she took a steadying breath first. "I don't know yet, sweetheart. Maybe. Hopefully." She crouched down to Lisa's level. "Right now, your Dad really needs us to be there for him through this. To support him and give him love. You think you can do that?"
Casey's immediate reaction was to clap her hands together and bounce with excitement, then she quickly covered her mouth with her hands, trying to contain herself.
"That's great," she choked out, managing to stay at least relatively calm. It had been so long since Dee had been with anyone, and she seemed to really like Hugo, so this was freaking awesome.
Unable to contain herself any longer, she sprung into the kitchen and said, "sorry Lisa, gotta steal Dee," before grabbing her hand and dragging her off to one side and into one of the other downstairs rooms. She let out a silent scream of excitement and threw her arms around Darcy.
Darcy had pretty much already figured out what was going on.
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 14, 2010 13:33:23 GMT -5
Lisa looked Darcy in the eyes for a moment, as if probing for something(a feeling? a certain look? It wasn't obvious). She then smiled, content with what she had found from her visual inquiry and responded:
"I always love my Dad. Why would it change now?" It seemed like Lisa was maturing at an accelerated rate through their little trial.
Hugo couldn't help but laugh at Casey's reaction, the detective replying to Casey's excitement with a:
"It is great. She's great." He watched as Casey nearly flew into the kitchen, most likely to express some kind of jubilation over her mother's new lover. Women were quite strange. They couldn't train you for that kind of psyche in the academy.
Hugo's attention returned to the holo's, now sifting through the case file with a fine toothed comb, looking for ANYTHING that would give him a clue as to what the UGAP could have picked out. He flipped through the victim's profiles one by one. Each of them seemed innocent enough except for one fact that he saw he had put a note on when he was in charge of the case:
All five vic's were some kind of ex-military, three of them connecting to a PMU(Privatized military unit) that served in the system of Colonies that bordered the Andromeda. That PMU(name was StarStrikers. Sounded corny.) was linked to a massacre one of the colonial planets, but nothing was ever discovered that linked that unit to the massacre itself.
So the Starstrikers massacre a planet, they get killed. Why then would Hugo get wrapped up in this? Who was the one that threw his DNA on the explosives?
Then it hit him.
Lisa looked outside a few more moments, watching the sun's rising with interest. It was always SO nice to watch...
There was a shimmer in the backyard. Lisa squinted harder to see what the shimmer was, but it didn't appear again.
Oh well.
Hugo was close....oh so close, he could feel it. Even though he was drop dead tired and hadn't slept for more than an hour in the past twenty three, he knew...just knew...
He sank to the floor, sitting on the ground with a loud THUNK. His brain was ready to explode, he wanted sleep. But he was close...so close...
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 14, 2010 13:52:05 GMT -5
Darcy hugged her daughter back, the girl physically bouncing with happiness in her arms. Obviously, she was trying to keep quiet, hence the overexaggerated physical display of exhilaration at the news she'd presumably just heard. She was sort of sorry it hadn't come from her, but pleased that Casey had reacted in this way. It was her seal of approval.
"You and Hugoooooooo," Casey practically sang, pulling away with a ridiculously large grin on her face.
"Hmm," Darcy stroked her chin, "I never would have guessed that was what you were so excited about..."
"Shush," Casey shook her head with disdain, but couldn't hide how happy she was.
"So, you're okay with it then? You're not just happy about me being with someone, you're happy with Hugo, right?"
"Well, despite the fact that you two seem to always get into trouble together, which is going to have me worried sick," she said, "I'm more than happy."
After another exchange of hugs and a few more moments of unbridled joy, they both emerged from the room, Casey into the kitchen to get some water herself, and calm down, Darcy walking back into the living area to find Hugo on the floor, looking about ready to pass out.
"Hey, hey," she said, quickly scurrying over and crouching beside him. Placing a hand on his forehead, she could immediately tell he wasn't sick, just tired. "Come on," she said, running her hand back through his hair, and putting a hand on his arm she told him, "you need to rest. We can regroup in the morning... later this morning."
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 14, 2010 14:00:20 GMT -5
"I know I have it. I know I do. It's all connected." He knew that he wasn't making sense, but he wanted to finish, there was no way that he could stop now, with all their lives hanging in the balance(the melodramatic phrase made Hugo laugh inwardly, but sadly, he knew it was true.). Hugo rose to his feet, a bit wobbly as he said to Darcy:
"No. No, I can do this. Just...just get me some coffee, ok?" One of the first things that the couple would learn about each other was that Hugo was stubbornly determined when he wanted to be.
Very.Stubborn.
He knew that she was concerned. How many times had his first wife walked in on Hugo at four in the morning still working on casework? How many birthdays had he missed? How many interactions he had missed with his daughter...would he make the same mistakes again? BUT IT WAS IMPORTANT!
No. What was important were three women(three!) he was now responsible for. He couldn't perform like this. He walked over to Darcy and whispered:
"Put me to bed, hotness."
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 14, 2010 14:22:19 GMT -5
Darcy rose to her feet. As stubborn as he was, he was going to have to learn that she could be equally as stubborn, especially when it came to a person's health. She was a Doctor after all, she could tell when someone's body could take it, and when it couldn't. Hugo needed rest.
Fortunately, for those moments he was quiet and apparently lost in his own thoughts, he seemed to talk his own mind round to her point of view, that he wasn't any good to them half asleep and exhausted.
"Gladly," she said with a smile, caressing his cheek gently with her hand before calling to the girls. "Time to get some sleep," she told them, even though they had napped on the train, they would still need a good few hours. She knew she could do with closing her eyes for a while. Quite a while if she could manage it. "Come on."
She gestured for them to go up the stairs first, then Hugo, and finally her. There were three bedrooms upstairs, one apparently with an en-suite, and another larger bathroom. Despite the amount of rooms, she figured she and Casey would be sharing a bed again tonight, for their own comfort and safety. "Which room is yours?" she asked, steering him down the hallway in hopefully the right direction.
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Post by hugodouglass on Nov 14, 2010 14:40:45 GMT -5
"There isn't any set room. Just...here." He walked into one of the bedrooms(he didn't care at this point) and flopped onto the bed, absent-mindedly taking his shoes off, then jacket, then shirt(he wasn't even aware that Darcy was still in the room at this point). As he went to remove his pants, he got up and looked straight at...
"Oh. I forgot you were here." He smiled apologetically, sitting back down on the bed. There was light shining in from a window that sat above the bed, said light revealing the long scar that ran down Hugo's front shoulder. He motioned for Darcy to come closer, the detective rising and taking her in his arms as he said:
"Casey took it well, huh? I'm glad." He bit her ear playfully as he continued:
"I may be sleepy, but you're skin is waking...me...up..."He bit her neck gently before coming back to her face, kissing her on the lips and telling her quietly:
"I'm thinking about elopement in the near future. Not a good example for the kids though, huh?"
The shimmer that Lisa saw previously had now returned. There were more of them.
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Post by darcyneumann on Nov 14, 2010 14:57:34 GMT -5
Darcy had opened her mouth but stood there silently as Hugo had gone through the motions of getting himself ready for bed. She probably should have removed herself by now, but, maybe it was because she was shattered herself, she'd just stood there, staring - in particular at the scar.
Despite both the girls being somewhere around, she allowed herself to be taken into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his body and cuddling herself into his warm skin. It was so comforting.
"Yes, yes she did," Darcy said quietly, distracted now that Hugo's mind, and lips, appeared to be wandering.
"Mmmm," she managed, reaching up to kiss his jaw and lips, "not really." Right now, she didn't really care how fast this was going. They'd been through such emotional trauma in the time that they had known each other, that it felt like their feelings had been cultivated over months, not merely weeks.
"I don't imagine..." she was punctuating her words with soft kisses, "Casey would... mind... but Lisa?" Her hand against his neck, she pulled her head back for a moment to look into his eyes.
Casey was in the bathroom, rising out her mouth and giving her face a quick wash when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. Turning the water off, she walked over to the window and peered out of it, checking to see if she wasn't seeing things.
"Mom," she called anxiously, without putting much thought into what she was saying, the fear rising in her chest, "there's something outside."
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