InsaneJournal

Who: Tom Judge and Cinderella
What: The princess rescues the ex-priest from the foul captivity of the LCPD drunk tank.
Where: Starts off at the station, leads to an awkward drive home.
When: Backdated to the early morning of 9/15.
Rating: Probably R. Tom has a mouth on him, and his ghost is a psychopath.
Status: Incomplete

Three smells hit Tom’s nose as he took his first conscious breath since drunk o’clock last night. They were pretty familiar smells, reminding Tom of the seven years he spent boozing, drugging, and whoring it up after his excommunication from the priesthood. These smells were booze, puke, and blood. He smelled so strongly of booze that he was pretty sure he was sweating pure vodka, and it almost overpowered the less intense smell of vomit and blood. Almost. From the feel of the rough floor underneath him, he had a feeling he was in a drunk tank somewhere, though he wasn’t quite ready to risk opening his eyes to check and letting whatever light might be out there flood his head. Still, if he had to put money on it, he’d say he was either in the drunk tank or an alley somewhere. He hoped he was still in Lawrence. Getting back there if he’d somehow drunkenly made it out of the city wouldn’t be fun. He’d just have to hope, because right now he didn’t feel like doing much of anythi-

OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT!

The thunderous boom of William Churchill’s voice created a wave of explosions in Tom’s head and he bolted upright with a sound somewhere between a yell and a whimper. Every single muscle in his body ached, and more than a few spots on his chest, back, and stomach twinged and twitched and tore. His eyes flew open, only to be greeted by a blinding white light that replaced the explosive pain of Churchill's voice with the searing pain of sudden light. Tom winced and brought up both his arms to block his eyes, pressing his face into the dark leather sleeves of his jacket. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he snapped, scooting back on his butt until his back hit a wall. He brought his knees up to his chest, and the feeling of his leather pants rubbing against it made him realize that somewhere along the way last night he must have lost his shirt. Tom squeezed his eyes shut tight, buried them in his knees, and wrapped his arms around them, trying to blot out the increasingly painful feeling of consciousness that was coming to him.

YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD DROWN ME OUT WITH BOOZE? YOU CAN’T DROWN ME OUT, YOU WORTHLESS FUCK! YOU SENT ME TO HELL AND THEN YOU TOOK MY WIFE AND KIDS OUT OF THAT PLACE AND LEFT ME THERE FOR THE TRAIN! A second later Tom felt rough hands grabbing his hair and forcing his head up, away from his knees. Overgrown fingernails dug into his scalp and drew blood, and then his head smashed into the wall behind him and sent a new wave of dizziness and pain through it. OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME YOU COCKSUCKING SON OF A WHORE! OPEN YOUR EYES OR I’LL RIP OFF YOUR FUCKING EYELIDS! Tom knew he was serious. Churchill had proven his propensity for violence both alive and dead, so against his better judgment, Tom opened his eyes. For a moment he was blinded again, but this time he forced his eyes to remain open and let them adjust to the light. Slowly the white began to fade into runny colors and blobby shapes, and after a few more minutes those shapes and colors sharpened into recognizable forms. On his right, bars. On his left, a poorly maintained stone wall with a few noticeable red and yellow stains and, part of the way up, a barred window where morning light was streaming in.

And standing above him was the naked form of William Churchill, as he’d been in Hell the last time Tom had seen him there. In life, Churchill had been an average, nondescript guy. A little on the muscles-turning-to-fat side, but other than that nothing to write home about. In Hell, he’d been a 12 foot tall ogre with overgrown fingernails, grotesquely bulging muscles, pale and sagging skin, and hollow eyes with two beady little red lights in their centers. He’d been naked then, too. Dimly, Tom could still recall the million-and-change years of torture he’d taken from Churchill’s wife and kids so that they could transcend Hell, could remember that ugly face from every single one of those memories. Even receiving all those relentless tortures hadn’t been enough to clear his conscience, but it had set them free. Churchill hadn’t forgiven him, and the two fought until Tom threw him in the path of the oncoming Train. The Train that took only the worst sinners into the Seventh Circle, the only place in Hell no demon had ever been. The Train that was driven by a being known only as the Conductor, who Tom was pretty sure was God, doing eternal penance for creating such a fucked up abortion of a cosmos.

Last night Tom was a wreck, but today he was just too hungover and emotionally drained to give a fuck about the reminder that Churchill posed. So instead of whatever whimpering Churchill may have wanted, Tom just fixed him with a bored expression. “Seventh Circle hasn’t improved your mood any, huh.” Churchill, used to being the big man in charge, wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the defiance. Besides, now that Tom was thinking with a sober-ish mind, he was beginning to suspect that all Churchill’s threats were as immaterial as he was. “You wanna maybe get your goddamn fingers out of my scalp? Either that or gimme a brain massage, whichever floats your boat.”

THIS ISN’T A GAME, I’LL FUCKING-

“No, you won’t.” Tom let the bored expression melt into something harder, something fiercer, the kind of glare he’d given the Magdelena when she’d been ready to shove the Spear of Destiny through his throat. This was the kind of angry glare that seven-going-on-a-hundred years in Hell bred into you, the kind that said step the fuck back or I’ll peel off your scrotum and choke you with it. “You’ve been pissed at me since before either of us got skullfucked through the dimensional barrier. Join the fuckin’ club, you impotent prick,” Tom snapped. “Line forms behind me and Jackie Estacado.” Maybe it was the hangover, maybe it was his general irritation about being awake at the ass end of the morning, but right now Tom didn’t feel like dealing with this limp-dicked murdering piece of shit. He abruptly stood up, forcing the ghost of William Churchill to release him and stumble back with a surprised gasp, and began searching his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. Each time he checked a pocket and found it empty, he swore a little louder, until finally he reached the back pockets of his leather pants and exploded in a string of swears that backed Churchill up a step further. Seemingly without regard to Churchill’s suddenly feeble attempts to threaten him, Tom strode over to the bars of the holding cell and began to pound on them. “Hey! Hey, I’m up and I’m sober and I wanna talk to somebody about getting out of here.” He knew that would bring someone down, eventually. This wasn’t his first drunk tank. In the meanwhile, he decided he needed to take stock of himself and see if he could figure out just what the hell had happened last night.

Some of it he remembered. The conversation with Cindy, while blurry, was still clear enough for him to know he’d made a superb ass of himself. It may have been true, he might have some squishy feelings there, but he hadn’t really been planning on saying any of that shit to her. To anyone, really. Last time he’d let himself get close to anyone he’d gotten 99% of them killed, and Tilly was only alive because of a fluke in timing. He hadn’t been planning on letting that happen again, leastways not with his intention of becoming a demon hunter so he could pitch in with this ragtag fight against the apocalypse. Then came Peeta and River, worming their way in past Tom’s guard with his soft spot for kids, and Cindy and her more than passing resemblance, in personality at least, to Tilly. His plans to just pick up a few things and take off had run crashing into a brick wall in a ball of flaming wreckage, after that. He also remembered the conversation with the chick that wanted to know how to kill a ghost. Everything after the conversation with Cindy was blurrier, and after about 2am there was just a big gaping blank spot.

The first thing he did was to take a step back from the bars, peel back the leather jacket that he’d replaced the cassock with, and look at his bare torso. He really wanted to know where those stinging, knife-like feelings were coming from. It didn’t take him long to spot the various little white bandages that dotted his body. Some of them were starting to stain red with blood, from the wounds underneath tearing due to the sudden motion from earlier. At some point last night he must have ended up in a pile of broken glass. Wouldn’t be the first time, but it would be the first time in awhile, so he turned to fix the confused ghost of Churchill with another glare and demanded, “The fuck did I do last night?”

Churchill actually opened his mouth to answer, or maybe to spew another threat, but before he could Tom heard footsteps behind him. He turned to see an out-of-shape, middle-aged uniformed officer coming down the bland hallway outside the holding cell and stopping at the bars. The cop looked like he was chewing on something he didn’t like, but Tom guessed that was probably just the look he wore when he had to deal with annoying drunks. “You got drunker than I’ve seen in awhile, scared the hell out of a liquor store clerk, drank three or four of his top shelves, and then trashed his place. When we got there you were having trouble getting up from a pile of your own puke, blood, and broken glass. It was charming.”

…He’s not lying. We fought. You started it. The clerk ran out, you finished off four of his shelves, and then you started throwing shit around trying to hit me. After awhile I think you were just throwing shit to throw shit. Then you started getting sick and crawling all over the place. Look at your hands.

Tom did, and saw more of the little bandages there, these stained a darker red as some of them started to reach their absorption limit. He flexed a finger and one of them began to ooze. Tom sighed and ran the other hand, so far devoid of any gushers, through hair that seemed to have one or two very unpleasant-feeling crusts in it. Oh wonderful, he’d gotten puke in his hair. That was great. “People always say that about me,” Tom quipped, more to give himself time to come up with something hopefully pathetic sounding that might start to get him some sympathy from the cop. “Look, officer, I’m really sorry you had to deal with me like that, and I’ll pay for whatever-”

“The guy’s not pressing charges.” That got Tom’s immediate attention. “His insurance is going to cover everything, and all you really damaged was some inventory. When we called and told him what you told us – not the sci-fi BS about being from some other world, but the bit about you being a priest and all – he decided he could cut you a break so long as you don’t come around his store anymore.”

Tom actually looked hopeful at that. “So I’m free to go?”

“Nope.” The cop actually smirked at Tom’s crestfallen expression. “We’re not charging you with anything. We could, but we’re giving you a pass on that on account of your sob story. Apparently the officer that brought you in really believed you were legit about the priest thing, and he convinced his CO. So you’re scott-free there. Thing is, you could’a hurt that clerk pretty bad, and you did hurt yourself pretty bad-”

“Oh, fuck,” Tom moaned. He knew where this was going and he did not like it. He’d heard a similar phrase more than once, and back then they’d always led up to forty-eight hours in the drunk tank while the police held him for being a “clear and present danger to himself or others”. At first they’d given him the option of calling a ride, but eventually people from his congregation had stopped coming, and then the other priests at his diocese had stopped coming, and then even the hookers he paid in advance knowing he was likely to end up in that situation had stopped coming. So for more than four years, a good chunk of time each month was spent in a drunk tank. The only reason he’d escaped actual jail time was because a couple of the cops knew him from when he was actually a halfway decent priest and took pity on him. This time he did have someone he could probably call…but the last thing he wanted to do after making an ass of himself with Cindy was call her to pick him up when he had fucking puke in his hair and smelled like a distillery.

“-so as far as we see it, you’re a clear and present danger to yourself and others. So we’re not going to release you into your own custody. Either you call somebody for a ride and we release you into their care, or you enjoy the next forty-eight hours as a guest of the county.” If the cop sounded a little smug, Tom couldn’t blame him. He imagined cleaning up a drunk, bleeding, vomiting guy raving about being a priest was probably not the most fun part of anyone’s evening. Blame or not, he still didn’t like it.

“…Forty-eight hours, huh?”

The cop’s eyebrows shot up to his receding hairline. “You’re not serious.” Churchill echoed him, which only further drove Tom to irritation. When even the psychopathic murderer could see the sense in the cop’s words, what the fuck else could he do?

“…No, I guess not. Fuck. You mind passing me my phone?”

The cop didn’t mind. In fact, now that it looked like the horrible-smelling drunk was about to be out of his thinning hair, he was positively beaming. He let Tom out of the tank and brought him out front, to a desk with his personal belongings sitting on them. Tom reached for the cigarettes, but stopped when the cop grunted and nodded to a no smoking sign they’d walked right past. He helpfully plucked Tom’s phone off the desk, dropped it into the hand reaching for the cigarettes, and sat down at a chair behind the desk and stared at Tom expectantly. Tom sighed and began scrolling through his numbers, looking for Cindy’s.

Gonna call the princess, Tom? She reminds you a little of Tilly, huh? You better hope I don’t figure out how to possess your worthless meatsuit, jackass, because I would have some fun-

Tom tried to tune out the rest of Churchill’s threat as he hit Cindy’s number and held his phone to his ear. The sound of the dialing made him wince and hold the phone a little further out, and he heard Churchill start snickering behind him, but he tried his best to ignore it. Now that he’d had some time to wake up, the anger was starting to fade behind the images of Churchill’s wife and kids in Hell. Tom knew his guilt was the only thing really giving Churchill power over him, but right now there was nothing for it. He focused again on the phone just as he heard the click of the line picking up. He tried to start talking right away, but his voice came out thick and gravelly and unintelligible and he had to stop, clear his throat, and try again. “Cindy?” Little better, if still a little bit like gravel being run through a meat grinder. “No pressure or anything, but you’re my only hope, Obi-Wan.”