She is huddled in a corner. Eyes, darting around the darkened living room, the streetlight casting an eerie glow over the walls; creating figures looming, reaching, stretching. A car door slams in the distance and she is up, back against the wall, heart beating ten to the dozen. The gun feels cold and foreign in her usually calm and steady hand. She is not sure if she would be able to pull the trigger if called upon; she wouldn't remember how. Her fingers wrap tighter, knuckles white as paper. She slides down the wall until her knees are by her ears and drops her head in her lap, the gun clattering onto the hard wood floor like a toy. In that one moment, it morphed from her safety blanket to her cast iron chains; it had been turned on her and she had felt its allegiance change. She lets the tears fall, dampening her yoga pants but she is in no mind to care. Her mother's murder had torn her apart, and over the years she had been stitching the pieces back together, but now these pieces had been shattered into oblivion; impossible to reconnect. She is broken. She has been for a while but has been unable to admit it until this moment. The once strong, independent, driven woman, who makes it her livelihood to run head first into danger, is frozen in place on her living room floor. Too many objects conspiring to trick her eyes and her mind; a reflection of a car light in the mirror, the creak of the pipes, the shine from the stainless steel oven. No matter where she looks, what she hears, it all is linked to the cemetery, the moment her light went out. Her switch was turned back on but inside there is still only darkness. A dark, hollow pit of despair and grief. Grief because this is something she deems impossible to fix with her murder boards, her time lines, her evidence, because that was almost it for her. Despair because she is stuck. She cannot escape this; not by solving, not by running, not by reading.
A knock pulls her out of her sodden haze. She instinctively reaches for her gun, auto-pilot and muscle memory coming to her aid. Another knock, and she swivels her head to the outline of the front door. She realizes that he has come to finish what he started at the funeral, and a part of her yeans for this release, a way of escaping. She creeps to the door, holding her breath, testing each step for possible noise.
"Kate"
In that one word, she feels those shattered pieces being pulled from all corners of her world into the center. A light flickers in the hollow pit. This is her release, but not the one she anticipated. She feels stronger, just from hearing that voice. She remembers a reason for fighting, for living, but only now has her body been broken enough to listen; the walls crumbled as soon as the trigger was pulled. The light burns brighter, and has spread to outline the door; pulsating, beckoning. Reaching with a shaking hand she throws open the door.
"Castle"
And with that she sees hope. She sees a constant. She sees recovery.