AU. Post season two finale, references through season 4, set season 5ish.
He always enjoyed the subway.
For all of its problems and rarely ever being on time, he'd always enjoyed the anonymity of it all. No one knew who he was or where he was going. Plus, it was easier than trying to get a cab. Especially during rush hour.
He tucked his swipe card into his coat pocket, sticking his hands in his pocket as he tensed his shoulders, getting himself settled to wait for his train downtown.
His phone dead in his pocket, he began to look around, staring at the people also waiting in the station, his mind already weaving them into his next story. That man holding tightly onto his briefcase could be his next killer, the briefcase holding the bloody pen he used to kill his secretary with whom he was having an affair.
No, that was weak.
That woman over there wearing a black, pinstripe skirt and jacket combo, arms crossed and looking annoyed as she tapped the toe of her heel angrily on the concrete. She definitely looks pissed enough to kill…
No, his next killer was definitely the woman right across from him, looking down at her phone, dressed in skinny jeans and a green leather jacket, her hair falling over her shoulder. Yes, beautiful, powerful, undeniably bad ass – she was going to be perfect as his next –
As if she felt his gaze, she looked up at him.
He thinks he may have stopped breathing.
Her hair was longer now, lighter. And she was skinnier. But there she was. Alive, breathing, something he hadn't entirely believed up until this moment. He'd known that she survived, but she was here, staring at him, and even if he couldn't see them clearly he could imagine her hazel eyes boring into him. She was tense, but so was he, and he wanted to call out, wave, do something but he didn't. Instead he just keeps staring at her.
He hadn't even recognized her.
He was on a book tour when Montgomery was killed, heard it on the news that she had been shot by a sniper and nearly died and he fought the urge to jump back on a plane and go sit outside of her hospital room until she got better but it wasn't his place. He'd sent flowers, but never heard anything back, and he assumed he'd lost his chance. He'd heard about the bomb she and that government agent had diffused in the city, heard about the time her car ended up in the river.
He never really assumed she'd ever make it out alive.
She looks to the left and it's then that he remembers where they are. He quickly sees the oncoming train and he tears his eyes back to hers, finding them instantly. She stares at him and he can't look away, his heart beating faster and faster in his chest as the train coming down the tunnel gets louder and louder.
He can't read her. He used to be so good at reading her, pushing her buttons, he used to know exactly what he should do and exactly what he shouldn't do, and, in this moment, he finds that he isn't angry anymore. And that was his fault; being angry in the first place. He stuck his nose where it didn't belong; He pushed all her buttons a little too hard. It's been years since he's seen her, and he thinks that's his fault, too.
He's the one who gave her up.
He's alone, and she's alone, and in that moment they're together and that thought makes his fingers ache because he loves her. Still. It hits him like the train speeding between them and in a moment he's back at their first case when she saunters away from him after pressing her lips so very close to his ears, he's watching her cry over the body of the man who murdered her mother, telling him that she wants him there with her. He's running through New York on a Monday night, watching her apartment go up in flames, breaking down her door because no, no, no she just couldn't be dead. There couldn't be a world that existed without Kate Beckett in it.
And the he'd left.
Everything had fallen apart around him. Gina hadn't worked out again and he shouldn't have been surprised. But nothing else had either. He'd tried, gone on dates, done everything he could think of to get her out of his mind because he wanted her to have a chance and be happy without him and it knocked him out. He hadn't predicted what living without her would do to him. He wasn't expecting her to destroy him like she did.
But she did.
And she's here. She's there, right in front of him. Breathing and alive and it makes him want to chase the train that is going to stop in front of her, the train she's going to get on it because it's a Tuesday morning and she must be working, and jump across the station to be closer to her. He mentally judges how far away the stairs are and how long it would take him to get across and there's not enough time to make it work.
He opens his mouth but he can't force anything past his lips before the train speeds between them and he can't see her anymore, just a blinding streak of gray and then he hears his train begins to pull into the station. He feels the people start to move their way forward, anxious to get a seat and he doesn't know what to do. What if she stays? What if she doesn't get on her train?
What if she does?
Her trains leave the station just moments after his does.
She's not sure why she didn't get on. She has to interview a witness, but there had been something there, she knows there was. She had stepped towards the train and stopped, her toes curling in her boots as the crowd rushed passed her, but she let the doors close without her inside of them.
God damn her, but she's missed him.
She watches as the train gains speed before it rushes through the tunnel uptown, and she finds herself taking a deep breath before she has the nerve to look back across the station.
He's gone.
It washes over her like acid, the fact that he's not there, and she can't help the way her hands start to shake.
She thought… She doesn't know what she thought.
She also thought he'd come back.
She shakes her head, blinking away the tears that threaten to come because the next train doesn't come for another 10 minutes and she has to find a cab to go interview a potential witness and she's going to be late if she doesn't run through the streets. She's so angry she could hit something, or someone, or herself and she just wants to go do her job until she can go home and open a bottle of wine to drink until this all feels like a dream. She turns quickly, folds her arms over her chest to squeeze her heart back together, begins to make her way over towards the stairs.
And there he is.
"There's no more painful love than the love you feel when you're in a railroad station and you exchange glances with someone whose train is headed in the other direction."
- Yasmina Khadra, The Swallows of Kabul
I don't know if you have any idea how hard it was for me to make this happy. Or at least hopeful. I figured you all would maim me if I didn't.
Maybe you will anyway. I have no intentions of expanding this right now. I'm absolutely swamped with life.