A/N: Using Rowling's initially befuddling style involving switching points of view without warning. Not a one-shot, as the ending suggests, but I'm not sure how long I wish to make it. This is a "kneejerk fic," I suppose, an uncontainable response to the inevitable twist in the gut Career of Evil leaves you with.

Not a native speaker, but I've been using English all my life in the way I've been taught and gotten used to. Please leave a comment or send me a message if you find anything off-putting. Don't hesitate to send me something as well if you have ideas that could help me write this fic.

I don't own Cormoran Strike or Robin Ellacott (yes, Ellacott) or anything related to them.

"Alright, out with it."

Robin had been silent if not monosyllabic for two days. She had done her job as well as she had been expected to, but there had been no questions about Strike's day, no offers of tea and sandwiches, and this morning, no offers of sympathy besides a half-hearted grunt when he had told her about how his right knee had been giving him hell since yesterday's four-hour surveillance of yet another soon-to-be divorcee.

She shut her monitor off, swung in her chair, and looked squarely at Strike, wrestling with herself. A few moments more and honesty—always her bloody honesty—won out. "Matt's been promoted."

Strike dropped onto the blue chenille sofa, a conciliatory gift from Robin's mother Linda after she had caused a bit of a scene when she had caught sight of him at Matthew and Robin's wedding. Linda was nothing short of belligerent, and Strike thought her anger justified until she flung accusations of manipulation and crassness in front of the other guests. He told her angrily that Robin had decided to return to her job, which earned him an almost impossibly shrill What? and forced Robin to intervene and lead them out of the modest hall rented for that evening's celebration.

"The case was extremely personal for Cormoran, Mum. He exposed a psychopath for what he was, a psychopath who shouldn't have got off clean but did, who might have eventually murdered his daughter in an elaborate, twisted scheme for revenge. Can you imagine the guilt he felt? And that's just speaking of one of the people he suspected of sending us that leg," Robin said. Strike felt a surge of warmth when she used us and not me. She had already told him she would be back at the office after the honeymoon, but it was the plural pronoun that told him that the deal was well and truly sealed.

After Cormoran and Linda exchanged apologies, Linda went back inside the hall under orders from Robin to apologize as well to the bewildered guests. When Robin's mother was safely out of earshot, the detective told Robin that he ought to go and not cause any further awkwardness. She was reluctant to let him off but eventually saw the sense in it and nodded her assent. As he turned to leave, Robin gave in to an impulse and put her arms around him. It took him a few moments to swallow his surprise and hug her back.

"Thank you—"

"I'm sorry, Rob—"

Their simultaneous speech gave way to laughter, and with a wave and a grudging Congratulations, Strike made for town in search of Shanker and the car.

Strike had thanked Linda enthusiastically over the phone when the gift was sent, and when she asked Robin why the piece of furniture had given him so much pleasure, Robin said, "The old one farted," and Robin and Strike laughed raucously, puzzling Linda even more.

Strike said nothing in reply to Robin's announcement. He was sure there was more to it but knew that it would come out without his prompting. After a minute's pregnant silence, Robin said, "He's being transferred. To New York."

It had been a little over six months since he had sent Robin away, five-and-a-half since she had gone back. The cases that had lined up since the business with Whittaker, Laing, and Brockbank were dully yet conveniently rife with middle- and upper-class paranoia and left them in little to no risk of any sort of harm. She ought to go before things got worse as they were bound to.

"When do you leave?" Strike asked. His eyes landed on the door to the inner office and stayed there.

"I don't…" Her eyebrows knitted themselves together, as though she was mustering resolve by physical effort. She waited for Strike to meet her eyes and said, "I'm not leaving."

"What?"

"I'm not leaving. I'm stay—"

"Yes, I got that. Does Matthew know?"

"You're the first I've told it to."

"And you decided on this… when? As you turned in your chair and finally let go of your sulk?"

Each time Robin meditated on her choices, she reached a dead end. London colluded with her career in detection in an attempt to pull her to what she thought was her natural inclination. The glint in Matthew's eye when he had told her the news and the barely hidden relief in her mother's voice when she had passed it on had added fuel to the fire of her rebellion, of her insistence to stay on the path she had almost been forced to turn back on when Strike had sacked her. Almost as soon as her thoughts took this tack, however, the silver wedding band and its engraved diamonds came unbeckoned to her view and doused the flames. She had made a promise in that church, a promise her and Strike's clients were predisposed to sully with distrust and infidelity, a promise she had told herself she would treat with the reverence so seldom accorded to it.

She had admitted to herself in a moment of brutal honesty that to stay in London was to turn away from Matthew, a possibility which promised relief and pain in equal measure. Their marriage had not been unpleasant, but she couldn't bring herself to relive the elation she had been treated to when the engagement had begun and the ring with sapphires had fit her finger perfectly. Matthew had avoided any conversation about Strike, for which Robin was grateful. But since the honeymoon, she and Matthew had hardly spent enough time together to speak much. They both worked round the clock, even during weekends—Robin, because it was simply the nature of her job, and Matthew, because he had had to put everything into the promotion he had aimed for and got. As things stood, Robin and Matthew's marriage felt like a stalemate.

Had the decision come to her on the spur of the moment? Or were her meditation and sulking, as Strike had put it, ways of putting off her arrival at the only real conclusion she saw available?

She thought Strike would be glad if she stayed, but his questions just now concealed a vexing accusation she couldn't quite put her finger on. "I've thought of nothing else since last week! I don't know if I ever really considered the alternative," she told Strike.

"Will he be stationed there temporarily?" Strike asked softly, surprising Robin, who expected a further rising of tension.

"I don't know." Robin closed her eyes. "I don't think I care. I don't care enough, at any rate."

A hand rested on Robin's shoulder, jolting her. "You need to rest. Get on home, talk to him, think on it some more. You don't want to put your foot in something you will want to get it out of and find out soon enough you can't." There was no doubt in Strike's mind that Matthew was a twat. He was Robin's biggest mistake, but it wasn't his job to convince her of that.

Strike helped Robin into her coat and saw her out of the glass door. With a final wave, he turned around and limped back into the inner office, intent on reading Robin's notes on Beer Belly, a paunchy adulterer who always brought a six pack to his lover's home. (They had given Beer Belly's wife photos of her husband in action, but she had continued to avail herself of their services because she wanted proof that there was a second lover.) As he sat in his desk chair, the door to the inner office reopened, revealing a panting Robin.

"What happened?" Strike said, poised to stand and, despite his burning knee, give chase.

"Nothing like that," replied Robin, motioning for Strike to sit back down. She composed herself, looked Strike in the eye, and asked, "Would you like me to stay?"

The question winded him. He had been looking forward to capping the day off with investigation notes, some homemade curry, and a quarter of a pack or so of Benson & Hedges. "You already know the answer to that," he managed.

"Actually, no. I don't." Why would Robin think he wanted her to leave? After risking all humiliation and asking her to come back at her wedding, of all times?

"Of course I would." His voice had become little more than a whisper. Then, as if catching himself, he added brusquely, "Don't be silly."

Robin beamed, and Strike felt warmer than he had since her sulking had begun. "Thank you. I just had to know for sure. Because… You know, gross misconduct."

"You're not going to let that go, are you?" He took comfort in the way they could now joke about how he had foolishly fired her.

"Not a chance. I'll be off." She faced him again as soon as she turned away. "Oh! Almost forgot! A sealed manila envelope arrived this morning, addressed to you. It's in my right drawer."

"Stick a paper knife in it, did you?" he asked with a smirk. His recent admission made him feel a tad giddy.

"Don't even start, Cormoran." She did this sometimes, said his name as though he was being told off by his mother. It had never failed to amuse both of them, and it didn't fail today.

Strike followed Robin to the outer office. With one last smile for her and the soft thud of the glass door closing, he took the envelope from the drawer and ripped the flap off.

He had hardly pulled out the contents when he dropped them, scalded. There were three photos containing three different corpses of women, but each face was an exact copy of Robin's.