[original] Baby Be Brave
Oct. 12th, 2007 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeTitle: Baby Be Brave
Subset: Pen Bryton
Prompt: Brave
Word Count: 1,854
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Sometimes the job requires you to be brave.
Ordinary people. Ordinary crimes. Shit like this happens every day.
This was starting to be my bread and butter. Domestic violence cases, gathering the evidence to bring spouse abusers and child abusers to justice. Real cops couldn't get warrants, and real abuse victims were too afraid to let police into their home, but a woman was safe. A woman, not connected to Child and Family Services or the police, was safe. She might be a new friend from the Laundromat, someone else who came over who had kids of her own.
No, I didn't have kids of my own. But I played well with other people's kids. And the presents I brought home had hidden cameras. It was evidence if they got divorces, if they testified against their spouses. It was evidence against the people who used their kids as punching bags. A couple of times, as sex toys.
And the best part about it, since I had to pay for my own health insurance and everything, was that by the time the abusers got violent I was out of there. The police were involved at that point and I didn't have to do anything. Or at least, that was the plan.
Most of the time, the plan worked. Sometimes, though, the family rat-dog decided the stuffed teddy bear with the nanny-cam made a nice chew toy. It was always a different stuffed animal, the surgery was easy, but this time I didn't know what happened. Maybe I'd sewn a chocolate in there by mistake.
"Can you come over…" She was whispering. And sobbing at the same time, it made it hard to hear. I got the gist of it. "He-he's been drinking, h-he found, th-th-the camera…"
And that was all I needed to hear. When bullies get really bad they don't need an excuse to lash out at people, but it helps. And we'd just handed him one wrapped up with a bow on top. No, it doesn't necessarily have to make sense, but there it is. Why are you spying on me. Don't you trust me. You're trying to leave me and take the kids you filthy little traitorous bitch whore. Some combination of that.
I'd heard it often enough, but usually it was shouted while they were taking the bastards away. Now I had it running through my head in all its infinite variations while I shattered the speed limit. Which was a bad idea. The last thing I wanted was to get delayed and ticketed on the way to the scene of the soon-to-be crime.
Then again, maybe the officer ticketing me would accept I'm going to stop a domestic assault in progress. It all depended on who I got.
And I couldn't afford to get distracted on the road, not as fast as I was going. Back to focusing on the road. Think about what's going to happen later.
I pulled into the driveway and you wouldn't have known what was going on to look at the outside of the house. There were a couple of toys on the lawn; it looked like most of them were in the shed set up on the grass. The lights were on, there were shadows against the window shades. There wasn't any yelling going on. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad sign. They could have reconciled their differences or it could be all over and I could be too late. No way to find out unless I went inside.
The door was unlocked. I was there by invitation anyway, so I wasn't breaking any laws by entering. No guns. I told myself that, no guns, and no flashing my gun. It was there just in case, not to be presented as a temptation for the guy to pull it out and stop shooting. There were alternatives to that. Like tasers. Tasers were good. I also had a mugger deterrent on my keychain. Metal, not pepperspray.
I turned the knob. The door opened. Both the kids were hiding behind the sofa, which didn't seem like a good idea. Not if people started throwing things through the glass.
"Hey…" I still didn't hear anything, and that still didn't seem like a good thing, but my first priority was to get the kids out of the line of fire. Whatever that meant. "Why don't you two go out to my car. Light's on, it's right outside." And the door was still open.
"Mommy's in the room," the older sister said. She couldn't have been more than seven. Maybe five. "I'm scared."
"I know, sweetie. I know. But here, you take this, and you call the number one number on there, okay? That's your number one friend." The police on speed-dial. "Officer Friendly, right? You get in my car, and you leave the lights on and you call and they'll be there quicker than you can sing all ninety-nine bottles of beer off the wall."
They scampered. Which was good, and I watched them get in my car and close the door. Keys were in my pocket and the brake was on, so I wasn't worried about them going anywhere. And as I was thinking that the door slammed open behind me and a woman hurtled across the room. Right through the space I'd been kneeling a few seconds before. Good timing for me, bad for her. She landed on the coffee table in what I'd call an unnatural and painful angle.
"Who is this?" he shouted, and I was glad his kids didn't have to hear it. "Huh? Who are you, bitch?"
"Eloquent." I said it while I gave him 10,000 volts to the chest, and then I called the cops on the house phone. No, that was the idea.
What actually happened was that I tried to pull out my taser and tried to hit him but wound up dropping it. Which was all the excuse he needed to hit me in the side of the head. Pretty hard, too. I collapsed over the poor woman and rolled off her to keep her from jamming her side into the corner of the table any more than it already was.
"What the fuck are you doing in my house?"
He really was a Mister Shouty, wasn't he. I scooted back before he got the bright idea to do some kicking. "Preventing a murder charge," I muttered. Pity he wasn't actually listening to me. He'd gone back to beating up on his wife.
"What the hell is she doing here?"
Right, then.
If there were going to be any murder charges happening around here, I was going to be the one to take the rap. She had kids. I knew all about parents suddenly disappearing on their kids. Those kids needed a mother, and if one was beaten to death and the other was in jail for it… hell, even if she wasn't, the kids didn't need to spend the next few days or weeks in Child Services because their dad was a jackass.
"You don't stop hitting her, you're going to regret it," I muttered. Ow. Yep, still hurt. But that at least got his attention off her and onto me again. I was resisting, and she was curling up and crying. I was the bigger irritation.
"You stupid bitch," he started.
And there was probably more along those lines, but it wasn't as though I was sticking around to hear it. I dragged myself upright and into the kitchen. All kinds of sharp objects and blunt objects and things to hit people with. And may I say, ow. I wasn't sure if he'd hit me or shoved me but I hit my head against the side of the counter and went down. With a bunch of drying and disgusting dishes on top of me. Guess their dishwasher was broken or something.
"You think you can come in here, try to break up my family…"
"You're already doing a pretty damn good job," I said, and put the frying pan between his fist and my face.
After the first 'aw fuck' I realized it was a cast iron skillet. That was good. Cast iron skillets were good. I swung and clanged it off his skull, swinging more from the shoulder and without any kind of real strength behind it. I hoped. It might have helped that I was a little dizzy, but I didn't want to kill the man.
He went down like the proverbial sack of equally proverbial potatoes. Mmm, potatoes. Maybe I'd have hash browns for breakfast when I…
Woke up. I woke up on a gurney covered in one of those harsh gray blankets they put over accident victims and trauma victims and other people too out of it to complain about the texture. Although I think they'd gotten softer over the years.
I looked around. Or, as much as I could what with being strapped to a gurney and all. "I hit my head?" Not that it was a question. The question implied was, what had happened afterwards.
Fortunately someone came over. "You were out for a little while there. We got him, we got the bastard. Looks like he cracked you a good one…"
I blinked for a second. They couldn't know that, could they? They couldn't possibly know that, not when they hadn't been there and the only evidence they had was a busted up house and three busted up people.
"She told us what happened." He checked my oxygen or pulse or something, I wasn't focusing on what he was doing. He also unstrapped me from the gurney, which was nice. "No, don't try to sit up. She told us what happened. Said you were very brave."
Heh. "Maybe. I survived, so I guess I got upgraded from stupid. I'd say she was pretty brave, making the moves to get out like that. She just called me over to do the heavy lifting."
"Heavy lifting or not, that was pretty impressive, having the presence of mind to get the kids out and call the cops …" He stopped me from trying to sit up again. "No, you lie back, we're going to take you to the hospital, make sure you don't have a concussion or anything."
Oh. He was wearing dark colors, police officer or something. Officer on the scene. And he was calling me brave. I felt all squishy inside.
"Long as you ride with me in the ambulance." Was I hitting on him? Please, no.
He smiled, though. "I think I can manage that."
So I was riding in an ambulance to the hospital, and the headache was starting to come on. Not so good. But the kids were safe, and she was safe, and I was safe, and the asshole was going to jail for a while at least. And I got to ride in the ambulance with a cute uniform cop who looked like he was going to give me his phone number. Brave or not, I'd done a good day's work today. And for today, that was enough.
Subset: Pen Bryton
Prompt: Brave
Word Count: 1,854
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Sometimes the job requires you to be brave.
Ordinary people. Ordinary crimes. Shit like this happens every day.
This was starting to be my bread and butter. Domestic violence cases, gathering the evidence to bring spouse abusers and child abusers to justice. Real cops couldn't get warrants, and real abuse victims were too afraid to let police into their home, but a woman was safe. A woman, not connected to Child and Family Services or the police, was safe. She might be a new friend from the Laundromat, someone else who came over who had kids of her own.
No, I didn't have kids of my own. But I played well with other people's kids. And the presents I brought home had hidden cameras. It was evidence if they got divorces, if they testified against their spouses. It was evidence against the people who used their kids as punching bags. A couple of times, as sex toys.
And the best part about it, since I had to pay for my own health insurance and everything, was that by the time the abusers got violent I was out of there. The police were involved at that point and I didn't have to do anything. Or at least, that was the plan.
Most of the time, the plan worked. Sometimes, though, the family rat-dog decided the stuffed teddy bear with the nanny-cam made a nice chew toy. It was always a different stuffed animal, the surgery was easy, but this time I didn't know what happened. Maybe I'd sewn a chocolate in there by mistake.
"Can you come over…" She was whispering. And sobbing at the same time, it made it hard to hear. I got the gist of it. "He-he's been drinking, h-he found, th-th-the camera…"
And that was all I needed to hear. When bullies get really bad they don't need an excuse to lash out at people, but it helps. And we'd just handed him one wrapped up with a bow on top. No, it doesn't necessarily have to make sense, but there it is. Why are you spying on me. Don't you trust me. You're trying to leave me and take the kids you filthy little traitorous bitch whore. Some combination of that.
I'd heard it often enough, but usually it was shouted while they were taking the bastards away. Now I had it running through my head in all its infinite variations while I shattered the speed limit. Which was a bad idea. The last thing I wanted was to get delayed and ticketed on the way to the scene of the soon-to-be crime.
Then again, maybe the officer ticketing me would accept I'm going to stop a domestic assault in progress. It all depended on who I got.
And I couldn't afford to get distracted on the road, not as fast as I was going. Back to focusing on the road. Think about what's going to happen later.
I pulled into the driveway and you wouldn't have known what was going on to look at the outside of the house. There were a couple of toys on the lawn; it looked like most of them were in the shed set up on the grass. The lights were on, there were shadows against the window shades. There wasn't any yelling going on. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad sign. They could have reconciled their differences or it could be all over and I could be too late. No way to find out unless I went inside.
The door was unlocked. I was there by invitation anyway, so I wasn't breaking any laws by entering. No guns. I told myself that, no guns, and no flashing my gun. It was there just in case, not to be presented as a temptation for the guy to pull it out and stop shooting. There were alternatives to that. Like tasers. Tasers were good. I also had a mugger deterrent on my keychain. Metal, not pepperspray.
I turned the knob. The door opened. Both the kids were hiding behind the sofa, which didn't seem like a good idea. Not if people started throwing things through the glass.
"Hey…" I still didn't hear anything, and that still didn't seem like a good thing, but my first priority was to get the kids out of the line of fire. Whatever that meant. "Why don't you two go out to my car. Light's on, it's right outside." And the door was still open.
"Mommy's in the room," the older sister said. She couldn't have been more than seven. Maybe five. "I'm scared."
"I know, sweetie. I know. But here, you take this, and you call the number one number on there, okay? That's your number one friend." The police on speed-dial. "Officer Friendly, right? You get in my car, and you leave the lights on and you call and they'll be there quicker than you can sing all ninety-nine bottles of beer off the wall."
They scampered. Which was good, and I watched them get in my car and close the door. Keys were in my pocket and the brake was on, so I wasn't worried about them going anywhere. And as I was thinking that the door slammed open behind me and a woman hurtled across the room. Right through the space I'd been kneeling a few seconds before. Good timing for me, bad for her. She landed on the coffee table in what I'd call an unnatural and painful angle.
"Who is this?" he shouted, and I was glad his kids didn't have to hear it. "Huh? Who are you, bitch?"
"Eloquent." I said it while I gave him 10,000 volts to the chest, and then I called the cops on the house phone. No, that was the idea.
What actually happened was that I tried to pull out my taser and tried to hit him but wound up dropping it. Which was all the excuse he needed to hit me in the side of the head. Pretty hard, too. I collapsed over the poor woman and rolled off her to keep her from jamming her side into the corner of the table any more than it already was.
"What the fuck are you doing in my house?"
He really was a Mister Shouty, wasn't he. I scooted back before he got the bright idea to do some kicking. "Preventing a murder charge," I muttered. Pity he wasn't actually listening to me. He'd gone back to beating up on his wife.
"What the hell is she doing here?"
Right, then.
If there were going to be any murder charges happening around here, I was going to be the one to take the rap. She had kids. I knew all about parents suddenly disappearing on their kids. Those kids needed a mother, and if one was beaten to death and the other was in jail for it… hell, even if she wasn't, the kids didn't need to spend the next few days or weeks in Child Services because their dad was a jackass.
"You don't stop hitting her, you're going to regret it," I muttered. Ow. Yep, still hurt. But that at least got his attention off her and onto me again. I was resisting, and she was curling up and crying. I was the bigger irritation.
"You stupid bitch," he started.
And there was probably more along those lines, but it wasn't as though I was sticking around to hear it. I dragged myself upright and into the kitchen. All kinds of sharp objects and blunt objects and things to hit people with. And may I say, ow. I wasn't sure if he'd hit me or shoved me but I hit my head against the side of the counter and went down. With a bunch of drying and disgusting dishes on top of me. Guess their dishwasher was broken or something.
"You think you can come in here, try to break up my family…"
"You're already doing a pretty damn good job," I said, and put the frying pan between his fist and my face.
After the first 'aw fuck' I realized it was a cast iron skillet. That was good. Cast iron skillets were good. I swung and clanged it off his skull, swinging more from the shoulder and without any kind of real strength behind it. I hoped. It might have helped that I was a little dizzy, but I didn't want to kill the man.
He went down like the proverbial sack of equally proverbial potatoes. Mmm, potatoes. Maybe I'd have hash browns for breakfast when I…
Woke up. I woke up on a gurney covered in one of those harsh gray blankets they put over accident victims and trauma victims and other people too out of it to complain about the texture. Although I think they'd gotten softer over the years.
I looked around. Or, as much as I could what with being strapped to a gurney and all. "I hit my head?" Not that it was a question. The question implied was, what had happened afterwards.
Fortunately someone came over. "You were out for a little while there. We got him, we got the bastard. Looks like he cracked you a good one…"
I blinked for a second. They couldn't know that, could they? They couldn't possibly know that, not when they hadn't been there and the only evidence they had was a busted up house and three busted up people.
"She told us what happened." He checked my oxygen or pulse or something, I wasn't focusing on what he was doing. He also unstrapped me from the gurney, which was nice. "No, don't try to sit up. She told us what happened. Said you were very brave."
Heh. "Maybe. I survived, so I guess I got upgraded from stupid. I'd say she was pretty brave, making the moves to get out like that. She just called me over to do the heavy lifting."
"Heavy lifting or not, that was pretty impressive, having the presence of mind to get the kids out and call the cops …" He stopped me from trying to sit up again. "No, you lie back, we're going to take you to the hospital, make sure you don't have a concussion or anything."
Oh. He was wearing dark colors, police officer or something. Officer on the scene. And he was calling me brave. I felt all squishy inside.
"Long as you ride with me in the ambulance." Was I hitting on him? Please, no.
He smiled, though. "I think I can manage that."
So I was riding in an ambulance to the hospital, and the headache was starting to come on. Not so good. But the kids were safe, and she was safe, and I was safe, and the asshole was going to jail for a while at least. And I got to ride in the ambulance with a cute uniform cop who looked like he was going to give me his phone number. Brave or not, I'd done a good day's work today. And for today, that was enough.