Written by Coco (i_heart_cuddy LJ)

Rated R/M

Warnings include: sex, violence, (allusions to) child abuse, marital infidelity, one instance of het sex

Disclaimers: I do not own Woman Undone or The Closer and I am making no money at all off of my creative pursuits.

Spoilers: None for The Closer, except that you should have seen season 5 to have "met" Sharon Raydor and season 7 to have "met" Gavin Q. Baker, but this is so AU you don't have to really know ANYTHING about the show, nor does it spoil anything. As for Woman Undone… this is rewritten… definitely some things are borrowed but other things are so completely different. It definitely doesn't spoil the ending.

Summary: Sharon Raydor is no stranger to Law & Order, considering her spotless service record as a Captain in the New Orleans PD but she finds herself on the wrong side of the justice system when she is found sitting next to the smoldering remains of the family car and her husband's body on Kennesaw Mountain, near Atlanta Georgia. She remains tightlipped about what happened and is set up with former ADA Gavin Q. Baker as her defense attorney and soon word of the case reaches Brenda Leigh Johnson, a Deputy Chief with the Atlanta PD and she gets involved, as obsessed with finding the truth as Gavin is with prying it out of the penitent Sharon.

Prologue

Sharon sat on the side of the road, looking in a daze across at the smoldering car.

Her watch had been broken for the better part of the day and she wondered what time it was and when someone would drive by. She hadn't thought they were that far into the mountains but maybe they'd gone further than she'd thought.

There were moments when her tired and overtaxed mind would nod off and for just a second she'd start to believe that it had all been a dream. Maybe it was all a misfiring of neurons but then she'd catch sight of the car and everything would flood back to the forefront of her mind. The images were sobering and knocked the wind out of her.

It really had all happened.

The car was wrecked, small fires still crackled in the engine, she'd sprained an ankle and lost both of her shoes, her dress was torn, she probably had a concussion and her husband was dead.

Chapter One

When she heard the first approaching vehicle her heart wrenched with panic. It was almost as if the day and a half of surviving on her wits had made her feral. She leapt to her feet, ignoring the pain that shot through her ankle and up her leg as she ducked behind the nearest tree.

An old Chevy truck puttered loudly along as it drove and it was nearly past the car before the driver saw it. The truck came to a squeaky halt and the driver jumped out. "Hey! Anybody in there?" He ran over to it.

The good Samaritan grabbed the driver's side door but recoiled from the hot metal and then turned pale when he saw the charred body inside.

He turned his back to the car, put his hands on his knees to steady himself and retched. Most people only see dead bodies at open casket funerals after the undertaker has covered up the look of death with industrial strength make-up. The smoking, charred body of a man, his skeletal structure exposed, bits of his polyester blend shirt melted to the leather seat behind him, was not something that anyone was accustomed to seeing.

"Sweet jesus…" he mumbled, crossing himself as he stumbled towards his truck, reaching into his pocket. He heard a rustle and caught movement out of the corner of his eye and when he looked up he saw Sharon Raydor standing next to the tree she'd been hiding behind.

He stared at her for a few long moments. He was clearly having an internal battle, trying to decide if she was real or if she was an apparition or a beautiful coping mechanism to gloss over the horror he'd just seen.

She stepped forward. Without the benefit of adrenaline this time the pain in her ankle was too much and she collapsed onto the ground.

He moved closer, still wary of her. She let out a breath as she looked up into the sky, the dehydration and hunger starting to get to her, the vertigo spinning the sky and the treetops as she stared up. Her knees throbbed where they'd just hit the road, she was probably bleeding. She didn't care right now because someone had found her, someone had found the car and now it was going to be alright.

On that positive note, she almost smiled before passing out.

She awoke in the passenger seat of the old Chevy; her head pounded, her body ached but she was awash with a feeling of relief. The driver glanced over at her, "thank god." He said, "you're awake."

She remained silent.

"I was afraid… I thought maybe you were going to…" he cleared his throat, shifting in his seat, uncomfortable to even think about the car. "Are you okay? I'm taking you to a hospital."

She vaguely understood that he was talking and even supposed that he was talking to her but she couldn't focus on it. She leaned her head against the cold glass of the window. The truck went over a bump and Sharon's head bounced against the window, hitting it with a soft thud.

She grunted and reached up to slowly massage her forehead, leaning her head back against the headrest and staring up at the ceiling.

"Do you, uh, speak English?" He asked, his heart still pounding.

Sharon's lips moved a little but no sound came out.

"¿Habla español?"

Sharon closed her eyes again. Right now? No, right now she didn't speak anything. iAsk me again in an hour…/i she thought as she drifted back into unconsciousness.

Sharon was halfway through the preliminary examination before things really started to register again. She reached up clutch her head and realized that she was hooked up to fluids and she regarded them as though she'd never seen anything like them before.

The nurse gently pushed her arms down, resting her hands in her lap. "You're okay." She said, lifting a small light to Sharon's eyes. "You're in the hospital. We've set your ankle and we're getting fluids in you."

Sharon's pupils reacted to the light but Sharon didn't react to the nurse's words. All of a sudden she felt a deluge of feelings, slamming into her unbidden. She gasped, feeling breathless and when she breathed out again it came in a sob.

Once she started crying she couldn't stop. She just wanted to cry until she drowned; she wanted to close her eyes and never wake up. She wanted to be washed clean, she wanted the last ten years to be erased, she wanted to start everything all over again.

The nurse rubbed her back soothingly, "you just go ahead and cry. You've got every reason in the world to cry."

Oh, if only she knew.

Sharon lay awake in the hospital bed, curled up as tightly as she could manage, letting her thoughts drift aimlessly. She still hadn't spoken to anyone and she didn't know how much time had passed.

She could hear her nurse talking with the sheriff in the hallway. Their voices were soft but clear and they were talking about her.

"No, she still hasn't said a word," the nurse said. Sharon couldn't remember her name or if she'd even told her.

There was a rustling of paper. It was a police case folder, Sharon would know the sound anywhere, she knew it better than the sound of her own voice. "We got a hit off her fingerprints." The sheriff said.

So her cloak of anonymity was being lifted and she was about to be asked to own up to her life, to stand up and announce proudly to the world that she was Captain Sharon Raydor. She felt anything but proud and she wished she was anyone but Captain Sharon Raydor.

The sheriff entered her room and her eyes followed him across the room as he grabbed the chair and dragged it over to her bedside. He had the file folder in his lap and he looked at her with sympathy but not pity.

"Hello, Captain." He greeted respectfully.

She opened her mouth and nothing came out so she closed it again and gathered spit in her dry mouth before swallowing it and trying again. "Hello, Sheriff." Her voice was rough but steady.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Somewhere in Georgia. In a hospital."

He took a small notepad out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. "Do you feel up to answering a few questions?"

"Sure."

"What brought you to Georgia?"

"Vacation… a mid-week getaway…"

"The car-"

"Burned…" Sharon breathed, remembering the scene in vivid, ghastly detail. "It slammed into the tree and it just went up… there was nothing I could do…"

He studied her face. The subject was obviously still raw and painful and he didn't want to push her too hard but he had one more question he had to ask, "the man who was in the car…"

"My husband…" she whispered and as she called up an image of his face she felt her stomach lurch and she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the nausea. "Oh fuck…"

"Do you know anyone in the area? Do you have a place to stay?"

Sharon shook her head.

"I'll get you set up at the Lakeside Motel." He stood, "thank you for speaking with me, Captain and I'm sorry for your loss."

He left the room and she curled up again, the fluorescent lights in the hallway buzzed and the nurses bustled and talked at the nurse's station by the elevators. Sharon was a million miles away; she was adrift in nothingness.

"Mommy's home!" Terry called out to the enthusiastic children. Jesse ran down the hallway ahead of Terry as Terry tightened his grip on Faith and jogged to the front door.

"Hey!" Sharon smiled, tossing her keys into the key bowl, "there're my little monsters! How are you today? How was school?" She carressed her son's soft hair.

"It was good I did /iminusi in math today!"

"No way, that's great!" Sharon bent down and picked him up, "so are you starting college soon?" She teased. He giggled and threw his arms around her neck.

"What about you, princess? Did you do anything fun?"

"¿Como esta, mama?"

"Let me guess, you watched Dora?" She looked between her two young kids, "you two are just getting too smart! You better stop it right now or you're going to get smarter than your dad and me!"

"And Dylan too?"

"Oh, I don't know." Sharon shrugged, "Dylan's pretty smart…" She looked to her husband with a smile, "how about you, honey? What mischief did you get up to today?"

"Oh, the usual: work, monster wrangling," he nodded toward Faith with a smile. "I made dinner."

Sharon nodded, "I smell it, it smells delicious."

"Do you want to go tell Dylan dinner's ready?" Terry asked pointedly.

"Sure." She kissed Jesse's cheek and set him down. She mounted the stairs as Terry and the kids went the other way, toward the kitchen.

She knocked on Dylan's door and received no answer. She knocked a little harder and he called out, "I'm busy!"

"Hey kiddo, dinner's ready."

The door opened and Dylan peered out at his mother, "oh, it's you."

"Yeah, it's me." Sharon ruffled up his hair. He swatted her hand away and smoothed down his do. "Did you have a good day?"

He shrugged with an eye roll. "I went to school."

"Haha, alright," she cocked her head toward the stairs, "come on, smells like Terry made lasagne."

"I hate lasagne." Dylan grumbled, brushing past her.

"Hey, doesn't your mother get a hug?" Sharon stood in place with her arms outstretched.

"Maybe later."

She followed him down the stairs. "I'm going to hold you to that."

"I said maybe." Dylan reminded, "don't get your hopes up too high."

Sharon was standing at the sink doing the dishes when her phone rang. She glanced at it and then looked around to make sure she was alone in the room, looked out the window to confirm that Terry was on the patio with Jesse and Faith.

She picked up the phone, "hey, I thought we agreed I would call you."

She listened for a moment. "No, I told you, we have to cool things off for awhile." Pause. "Of course, he knows, he's not completely stupid."

She watched her husband from the window and she sighed. "Look, I can't see you anymore. I'm going to try to make things work-" she listened and then laughed, "no, we can't have one last fuck for the road."

When Sharon looked up she didn't see Terry out the window anymore. Suddenly she was aware that the person on the other end was talking again. "I'm sorry... What? Have to go." She heard the sliding door open and she quickly hung up the phone.

"How are the dishes going?"

"I'm almost done." Sharon smiled, plunging her hands back into the dish water.

"You don't have to go back to work tonight, do you?"

"Uh, no," she shook her head, "I have to finish a couple of reports but I brought them with me."

"Cool." He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer before heading back outside. When the door closed behind him Sharon let out the breath she'd been holding.

Terry was lying on the bed with a book when she entered and shut the door behind her. "The kids are in bed…" she purred, unbuttoning her blouse and slipping out of it.

He sat up a little and set his glasses on the bedside table, watching Sharon strip.

She stepped out of her skirt and crawled over him. She ran her hands up his bare chest as she straddled his hips. He made no move to reciprocate and she sighed a little, "what, are you going to be mad at me forever?"

His hands came up to grip her ass and pull her down against him. Sharon slipped her eyes shut and moaned softly. He lifted up to push his pyjama bottoms down and kicked them off. She reached down and stroked him.

He groaned and reached up to knead her lace-clad breasts. She pushed her breasts into his hands and bucked against him. She got up just long enough to pull off her panties before sliding down onto him with a sigh and a moan.

Rising up and driving down she set the pace, slow and sensual. He wrapped his arms around her middle and flipped them over. She hmphed in surprise and he jerked his hips, bucking wildly. "Hey! Slow down!" She hissed.

Her protests only encouraged him, feeling vindictive as his hips slammed into hers until he felt his orgasm starting to rip through him, he groaned into her hair and then collapsed on top of her.

Panting, he rolled off to lay down next to her.

She narrowed her eyes at him in disgust. "Seriously?"

He leaned up and turned the lamp off – out of sight, out of mind – and closed his eyes to go to sleep. Sharon let out a heavy sigh and got up to take a shower – apparently, if she wanted something done right, she had to do it herself…