At the last moment, you spare him.

Daniel Cross blubbers as he tries to manage some grip with his loose, damaged hand on the bricks below the roof's edge. He thinks he finds it in a small groove above a brick... but loses it the moment his good hand finally slips. He exhales what would be his last breath as he falls.

From statue to blur, your body shoots forward and downward, your arm stretching out towards the man who deserves to fall. You nearly break his good arm as your hand strikes and crushes it in a vice grip, and his shoulder nearly dislocates as his entire body tugs on this anchoring point. He wails at the pain, the shock, the terror of dangling over **** by naught by your grip. Your body trembles with the effort, holding yourself up and safe from falling with him, and keeping some three hundred pounds of squirming worm clutched between fingertips. Your muscles ripple and scream, but you maintain your hold of him there, your wide eyes staring into his as if to snatch out his very soul. He doesn't look away; he knows you're all that keeps him alive, now. Thunder rolls over the scene again, and his body swings ever so slightly.

You slowly lift him, body screaming at the strain and, when at last he's clear, you twist yourself, using the momentum to toss him back onto the roof, his back creating a nova of water as he splashes hard into the world of the living. You inhale. You exhale, slowly. Daniel Cross' **** breaths are audible even over the rain, even as he lays there, gripping the old tarred layers of the roof that floated upwards in this downpour. You approach him, and kneel by his head, looking over his expression with a newfound curiosity. This was the man you scared you, once. This was the holier-than-thou gentleman you upset with your legal, consensual pornography. It's too much... you start to laugh. He looks at you, bewildered. Your chuckle grows in volume, becomes rancorous, causes your chest to pulse as you struggle to inhale to keep laughing. You look all around, needing someone to see this sight, this absurdist comedy that played out in naught but six hours on a weekday night. A lightning rod on a nearby ceiling is struck, casting a blinding light over the entire block of roofs, yours included, and arrives with a rolling, thunderous clap, but still your laughter is what rings in Daniel's ears as the clap rolls past you both. Daniel Cross, his body racked with pain, his entire spirit crushed under your heel, joins you with a sparing chuckle.

You stop laughing.

He stops, too, and fear dances in the twitches of his face.

"You vanish," you hiss. He blinks up at you, but says nothing. He doesn't dare. "Ophelia told me about how you two operated, how she's still a missing person in Buffalo... and I checked to find out that that's still the case. I also found out you're still unmarried. You have no child. You have no wife. As far as the police are concerned, you have nothing tying you to the state of New York besides work. So you have no reason to stay here." Daniel's tears mix with the rain, but he still remains silent. "You leave for another state. Jersey, Rhode Island, California to join a cult; I don't care. You go there, and you find employment. You settle this new life, away from the trauma of your lost daughter, same as why you ran here to the Big Apple. You forget that old life. You learn to live again. You live the rest of your days to repent."

"W.... W...." Fear and pain almost bar his words. "Why...?"

"You're never going to see Ophelia or Lazarus again." The rain continues to fall, but lightens up in the silence you share. "And if you do, or if I ever see you again, or if you so much as-" Your fist shakes, straining to not come down and crush the bastard's skull. "... not even Jesus will be able to save you from me, Daniel."

You stand up, allowing yourself a moment to menace over him as a period on your sentence. When you believe it impossible for him to not understand, you finally turn around and take the elevator back down, alone. You would spend the rest of the night with his victim, doing your best to treat her better... and one day, to prove you were better than him.

~ Several hours later ~

The morning brought an end to the rain, but it didn't mean much to the beat cop stuck watching, and smelling, the awful clean-up the crime scene investigators had to perform. It was pretty routine, given that New York had no shortage of these sorts of tragedies, but the rain and the splatter from impact meant that the morning sun would soon bake the ugly sod until he smells unbearable. It was fortune, or misfortune, then, that let Alex Jones notice the smell of blood in the rain that ran down the sidewalk from the alleyway. He's the officer on duty now, looking around to keep every rubbernecking nobody on the right side of the police tape, at least until he spots two coats crossing under said tape. They don't need to flash their badges. "Detective Sanchez, Detective Forbes," the patrolman greets.

"'Morning, Beans," yawns the younger, Hispanic detective. He doesn't bother covering the mouth on that good-looking, chiseled face, but he shrivels visibly under the withering gaze of his partner.

"Found a jumper before your morning coffee?" Forbes was a cut above, a detective in her middle years and with more experience than both of the men present. The inside joke wasn't lost on Jones: she put hours in as a firearms instructor when he went to Academy, and his caffeine excuses for poor aim earned him the nickname "Beans". He thought it was funny before he knew she'd have the whole **** calling him that before he even graduated.

"I'm afraid so, Detective." He doesn't dare return her nickname; he hadn't earned the right, yet. Instead, he gets right to the point. "Big man who lives on the fourth floor, moved in just over a year ago, I.D.'ed by a neighbor, along with some other suspect claims."

Sanchez shrugs. "Like what?"

"Like saying he has a wife and newborn, talked about how much of a tragedy it was... except he doesn't have a wife. CSI already ran the records... I figured that just meant some baby momma's about to get bad news, but then it gets weirder than that."

"Trying to take my job, Beans?" Forbes narrows her eyes, but playfully so.

"No ma'am," he chuckles. "Just... well, you'll see the file..."

"Since when does a jumper need a file?" Sanchez cranes his neck as he talks, catching a glimpse of a massive male arm sticking out from behind a dumpster.

Jones clears his throat, and whispers to them as they near the mouth of the alley. "Since the alleged wife he had a kid with matches the description of a missing teenager from Buffalo... one he reported missing just before moving here." Both detectives stare back at him, stunned. It took plenty for the older to give Jones a look like that, but he can hardly blame them. He then jams a thumb in the air towards the two other detectives working the scene. "... also, because Paul and Yulie think someone helped him off the roof."