BETA READ by Lady Anemone

In the same universe as my series POSITIVE/NEGATIVE.

All six men were sitting there on a row with their hands supporting their chin. Timothy Speedle, John Hagen, Peter Elliot, Dan Cooper and Kenwall Duquesne. There was another man sitting there as well, of whom neither of the others exactly knew the name… although he actually seemed a little familiar to Duke. All of them wondered who he was, but didn't say a word and just continued doing what they did.

They all looked at the same point somewhere in the distance: a beautiful young woman in her mid-thirties with blond hair and green eyes. She was carrying her little daughter Emily to her crib and kissed her husband Lieutenant Horatio Caine on his lips as she passed him in the kitchen. Although the six of them had all broken her in some kind of way, she was still standing there. With her head up high. She was so damn strong.

Suddenly, another man popped up right beside Kenwall. It was Jake Berkeley. "Alright... What am I doing on this damn... cloud?" His eyes wandered over to the other men sitting there, blankly staring at him for a second, and then turning their attention back downwards. "What are you guys staring at?" He asked, angrily.

POP!

"This is not really happening!" Jake yelled, jumping upright on his feet and trying everything to see his back, where just then had appeared two white feather-like wings. Jake's eyes wandered down in disbelief and only saw a small fig leaf. His mouth opened in real shock, right on the moment six heads turned to face him and frowned. "What?"

Speed's head already turned back downwards and the former CSI sighed. "I'm sorry, Calleigh," he whispered. "I should have listened to you, and cleaned my gun after the first time it malfunctioned. I mean, I hurt you so much with–"

"Why do you have a larger leaf than me?" Jake yelled over the other heads to him. Speed looked up at him with his chocolate brown eyes and whimpered for a second in that very characteristic way and frowned before answering, "Maybe... I just have more to cover up than you, Jake."

Jake kept his mouth shut and sat down again, while Speed's eyes turned back to the scene down. He had always thought there was more going on there, and there the happily married couple stood. A smile spread across his face as Horatio took his daughter from her mother and she began giggling as her father tickled her tummy.

"Calleigh," Hagen sighed. "Didn't she see how damn much I loved her? I had even bought an engagement ring, but she just kept rejecting me and pushing me until I suddenly ended up here. It wasn't my call, though. Hers."

"Do these really… work?" Jake asked, loudly, closing his brown eyes in concentration and moving the wings attached to his shoulder blades, hitting Duke's head with one of them.

"You need to watch out with those, young man!" Calleigh's father exclaimed, shielding himself from Jake's whappering wings. Of course the wings moved... Why did every single one of them had them otherwise?

Peter Elliot and Dan Cooper had ended up there on the cloud on exactly the same moment. Both men had been killed during a break-out in jail a few days before Duke had joined them in a fig leaf, and with own wings on his back. He had drunk himself to death. His alcohol addiction had been the death of him eventually.

Peter's gaze fell on John Hagen for a few moments, before covering his face in both hands. "I should have never listened to him. I should have told her, and be that one holding her daughter," he said, "Instead of hooking up with Monica and allowing her to run over me like that. I really paid the prize for that." He turned his gaze back to the scene in the DuCaine kitchen. Emily resembled her mother so much. She was just as beautiful as her. The only difference was the fact she had her father's blue eyes. Horatio's.

'It definitely was my own fault,' Cooper thought. "I should have never rubbled in Speedle's locker and stolen his credit card – not that he still needed it anyway, but I just should have never taken it. Then I would have been a damn good CSI instead of a dead felon." His voice sounded bitter at his next words. "Though it was you talking Caine into firing me immediately, and it was you that got me behind bars." He was still angry at her for his dismissal.

Jake was still moving his white feather-like wings like an idiot.

"Lamb-chop," Duke whispered, "I should have never gone back to drinking. I should have remembered the promise I made. I should have thought about you and little Emily. Instead of… She lost her grandfather because alcohol meant more than she." Kenwall Duquesne ducked his head like a badly behaved dog and if there had been a bottle of scotch, he would have drunk it wholly. The guilt the old man felt seeing his only daughter and granddaughter where neither of them could see him, simply ate him alive.

Berkeley finally got his feathery wings under control and saw what the other men witnessed. "Calleigh?" Jake spoke.

"She can't hear you," an unfamiliar voice said, causing six adult men to turn their heads in the direction of the voice's owner, which appeared to be the other man on Tim's side.

"Michael," Duke stated, finally remembering where he had seen him before.

Michael nodded. He had been in love with Calleigh in the first year of high school. She had never felt the same about him, though. As revenge because he couldn't have the most beautiful girl of their year, the boy had edited a picture of her and had sent it to all other students. Calleigh had seen one of the pictures on her locker the day after, and had immediately known who was responsible for it. She had gone to him and had smacked him in the face in the presence of all his friends.

She had never showed her tears, but she had been hurt. She still couldn't believe someone could do something low like that just because the two of them didn't share the same feelings.

Suddenly, an unknown force pulled Jake off the cloud by his ankle. "What… is going on here?" were his last words before his both feet found the Earth again. He scratched the back of his head and wondered whether he was going insane or had been dreaming, or maybe it was just both?

And there Jake stood, with only a fig leaf in the middle of Miami Beach. His feathery white wings were completely gone, though.