Greetings. Upon advice via a private message on how to make small improvements to the formatting, I've completely re-uploaded this story. Also, due to the last chapter I've changed the rating to M (to be safe). Format is improved, but content remains largely unchanged.

Disclaimer: They're not mine. Nope. Sure aren't.

"Calling All Angels, Calling All Angels. Walk me through this one, don't leave me alone." –Jane Siberly, Calling All Angels.

Her alarm clock sounded way too soon that morning. She'd sworn she'd just laid down 5 minutes ago. However, the early may sun shining through her blinds told her otherwise. It was clearly morning and time for her to get a start to her day. As she rose she noted the smell of coffee wafting through the air and silently gave thanks for her automatic coffee maker, an apartment warming gift from him, given to her early last year. Despite the smell of fresh coffee tempting her, all she really wanted to do was go back to bed. For just a while longer she wanted to forget about him and his new and obvious disdain for her. Sure he'd tried to hide it from her, but she was a detective, trained to read behavior, and frankly he wasn't that good. The only thing worse than knowing that he no longer cared for her, was knowing that he didn't even respect her enough to be honest about it. Fighting back the tears that were threatening to fall, the same tears she'd cried herself to sleep with the night before, she rose from her bed and headed for the shower.

Standing under the warm spray, Beckett silently ran her fingers over the small scar in the middle of her chest. Feeling the raised skin beneath her fingers and the slightly uneven texture within the scar itself, she let her mind wander again to the obvious changes in her partner's behavior. Calling him a Jackass was an understatement, she thought to herself. His behavior was simply cruel; flaunting the fact that he'd decided she was no longer worth waiting for. She'd tried to act ambivalent, to convey to him that he didn't affect her, but it was of no use. She'd even considered asking him to just leave, but she couldn't bring herself to sever the one last tie she had to him. She wasn't strong enough to walk away. Instead she choose to live in complete hell, day after day, because he had become as necessary to her as breathing and she wasn't sure how she was going to function without him by her side.

Rinsing the soap off of her now clean body, she turned off the shower and tentatively stepped onto the floor mat. On to other matters, she forced her brain to shift gears away from the pain that was him, and onto a different pain altogether. She had just passed the one year anniversary of the day she'd been shot, which came with another follow-up appointment with her primary physician, Dr. Porter. It was supposed to be her final appointment with him.

She'd gone to see him less than two weeks ago, and during his exam he questioned her about the appearance of her scar. He palpated the area and noticed a very small nodule in the far right corner of the scar, it looked bruised. It was tiny, no larger than a pea actually. She'd noticed the change shortly after her last check-up several months ago, but thought nothing of it. With a wound as deep and as severe as the one inflicted upon her body, she knew that healing was a long process and different bodies handled the healing process differently. Her doctor was also not too concerned, but requested they take a small sample of the tissue to be safe anyway. A short punch biopsy later, along with a few stitches to close it up, and she was on her way.

Kate looked at herself in the bathroom mirror once again and found her fingers drawn to the raised tissue on her chest, to the slight discoloration within the scar, and to the two stitches that were recently placed on the small bump on the very edge of the area. In a few hours she would go back, have those stitches removed, and would finally be able to close the chapter on her physical healing (and move on to the broken heart he left, she morbidly thought).

Several hours later she sat on a small, uncomfortable examination table, clothed in a thin hospital gown, waiting for Dr. Porter to come and remove the stitches from her chest. He walked in, shook her hand and asked her to lie back. With a few snips, and some wincing over the pull on her sensitive skin, he was finished. She raised herself again as he moved to sit in the chair across from her. Opening her file he cleared his throat and got right down to business.

"I have the results from your pathology labs here, and we've found that the sample contained abnormalities." She calmly tilted her head and looked her young doctor in the eyes, "ooohh..kay.." she slowly replied. "What does that mean? Abnormal how?".

"Well, it is not uncommon at all for scar tissue to form what are called Fibromas. They are benign in nature and it is very rare for malignancies to arise from these masses. I decided that we should biopsy your mass as just a precaution"…he paused, took a breath and continued… "However, your sample showed distinct markers for CD-34 cells, an indicator of malignancy. We had further testing done and we've identified your lesion as a Fibrosarcoma; a rare form of connective tissue malignancy."

She silently stared at her doctor, mind blank, cement in her stomach and a rush of what could only be described as ice in her hands and feet. She flexed her fingers to alleviate the sudden clamminess there and cleared her throat. She spoke, her voice shaky and sounding utterly foreign. " I'm sorry…Can you repeat that? What does that mean? …" Kate Beckett was a survivor, she'd come back from her shooting, this appointment was supposed to bring closure to her. It simply didn't make sense to her. "I….I'm not sure I understand." She could feel herself visibly shaking now.

"Kate. I'm sorry. You have cancer". He never took her eyes away from hers as he spoke words that would certainly devastate and change the woman's life forever.