A/N: A very happy birthday to Cali, a.k.a. Itsdelovely. Hope this fills your need for a Kalicia fic.
In a bar in downtown Chicago a stunning Indian woman sits nursing a shot of Tequila. In another life she is a kick ass in house investigator for the law firm Lockhart, Gardner, and Canning. Right now though she is just a woman missing her friends. See she used to have two friends, but now she's all alone. Her best friend was a lawyer, Will Gardner had been her best friend. But a few months ago in a tragic accident she had held him in her arms until the EMS personal had taken him from her. He died at the hospital, and Kalinda misses him. The saddest part of her story though is the friend that she and Will shared.
Sitting at the counter in her apartment another woman sits, she too is drinking, and she too sits alone. She is a striking woman, tall with shiny brunette locks curled gently around her face. Her pale skin is accentuated by an almost whorish color of red lipstick, but on her it looks like power, the red on her makes her Alicia Cavanaugh Florrick. The Alicia that Kalinda and Will both loved. And she too lost Will in the tragic accident on March 23, 2014. Sadly she lost Kalinda long before that.
The reason these two women drink is the same, the reason these two women drink alone is the same as well. There was a time when the two women drank together. In fact as both women drink they reminisce about the "good times" the times when they drank together and talked about Will.
It's a busy night at the bar, Alicia orders while she waits for Kalinda to show. She knows Kalinda is investigating something for the law firm but she'll be down soon. Alicia has won yet another case and when Kalinda joins her she'll make up some kind of silly Lockhart/Gardner tradition about having to drink a martini to celebrate winning her 15th jury trial.
Kalinda searches the crowd at the bar and spots Alicia sitting with an empty seat next to her. She crosses the room quickly and sits in the seat next to her.
"It's a Lockhart/Gardner tradition to drink a Choclatini when you win any jury trial after your 10th case. So order up, I want extra chocolate." Kalinda smiles at Alicia as Alicia giggles.
Alicia signals the bartender and orders their drinks. As they arrive the two women sit. They talk little but enjoy the comfortable silences between them, the two women love this relationship. It doesn't require much in words which suits them both well.
See this is how it used to be for these two women. And both women miss it, especially now while they both sit missing Will.
One of the women reaches for her phone, the number has never left her speed dial even after all they've been through. The conversation is brief and before long a woman enters the quiet hotel bar, the heels of her footwear clicking on the solid wood floor as she crosses to a table in the corner. The woman seated stands.
As the woman approaches the table she announces,
"When the man you love dies, you get drunk with your best friend on whatever sounds good, and I fervently hope this does not become a tradition."
Kalinda offers Alicia a watery smile as the two embrace. They will close out the bar that night. Both drunker than they have been in years. But they can't help but feel a little bit of normalcy sneak in after such a weird year. See in spite of tragedy they have finally found each other again and maybe now things will start to heal, there will always be Will shaped hole in both women's hearts, but now. Now there won't be a missing piece in each woman where the other should be.