We Are

Summary: It's three in the morning and she's having dinner. But the meal is so good. OneShot.

Warning: When did I come up with a CC-fic the last time? Feels like ages ago. Watching one episode was enough to have everything coming back! It is short, though.

Set: post-ep11s7 – The good Soldier

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

It's three a.m. in the morning and she's having dinner.

Lilly Rush is sitting in a homely living-room, the table set, her dish loaded with meat, vegetables and rice, and doesn't know where to look. The light seems too bright though it is already dimmed. The room seems so neat though it has the distinct air of a room often used and lovingly kept. The people are familiar and yet strange. She has no place here and yet there she is.

The dinner is good. The meat is a bit dry but if there is someone to blame for it it's them. They've been hours too late, after all, and three in the morning is not the usual time for a meal.

Her father looks apprehensive.

Finn looks doubtful.

The woman on the other side of the table…

She looks like she cares. And Lilly isn't used to that kind of look anymore. She cannot remember the last time someone cared for her, someone who wasn't her colleague or friend or superior. She cannot remember the last time she sat around a lovingly set table, having dinner with more than one to keep her company. She cannot remember the last time…

She cannot remember the last time she felt so exhausted.

A call from her father already before lunch break. A meeting with him in the afternoon. A day full of work. Another call and a trip down to Atlantic City in the evening, a two-hour-wait for Finn in front of the casino, the search for the car, the drive back home. The silence. She, who is used to being alone, should be used to silence, one should think. But it's heavy and laden with things and she feels like screaming. And, of course, the inevitable confrontation between Finn and her father just as they arrive and that somehow gets her involved, as well. She listens to them fight until she cannot keep silent any longer, until her job and her choices and her entire life are questioned, and then it's her against her father and then Finn against both of them. She turns away, angry and desperate and wanting to run but they're still in the car and there is no place she can go. She feels Finn's eyes bore into her neck from the back-seat and hears her father sigh tiredly and then there's a knock at the passenger's side window and there stands the woman. Her voice is harsh and her words are accusing but somehow she manages to look inviting, at the same time, and her eyes are inexplicably gentle.

Lilly really isn't used to this anymore.

What follows is aforementioned dinner and awkward silence, punctured by her own awkward attempts to help herself to more meat and Celeste loads her dish with a huge piece and the one time Finn asks her to pass the water jar. She gets the distinct feeling he is looking for an accomplice in her. He does not want to go to college, he wants to become a cop, and she knows whom he is using as a role model. He'd better not. She is not the person any teenager wants to be like, torn and shattered and cool and distant. But she feels the hesitant affection for him already rising and she cannot fight it. Not after he got himself drunk in order to see her, not after he tried to defend her against their father, even if he shouldn't have. He's young and hopeful and glowing with vitality and if he rebels he does so because he feels like it's his duty and wants to put his foot down, not because he wants to hurt his parents. But right now she isn't sure where they are and on which side they stand. Hell, she isn't even sure which sides there are, and which one she is supposed to be on. She feels like intruding, like elbowing her way into this tightly knit family, and she does not want to.

Or, to be honest, she wants it really, really badly. To intrude. She wants to be a part of this, of this people who seem to care, who seem to look up to her and what she is doing, who seem to wait for her to show up when she has said she would. She wants to be a part of this family so terribly it hurts as she swallows and she knows she shouldn't wish for things like that.

But the meal is so good.

And then, there it comes – a thunder storm with the force of a hurricane – and when Lilly manages to tear her eyes away from Celeste's face she sees the same mixture of guilt, stunned silence and surprise on the faces of her father and Finn. Hey, her brain screams, don't be surprised, you all know her longer than me! And then, as her eyes return to the woman again who is mustering her with those eyes that genuinely care, she is unable to come up with any kind of answer. "Do you understand?" Celeste questions again and her head weights a ton and her tongue even more. This is the moment, she realizes, she has feared so much that she has alternatively barricaded herself in her apartment or has stayed in the department until late after ten in the evening to not have to live through it. Even though she never was sure why she was so afraid of it. Perhaps she feared another break, another cold, another decent into loneliness. What she didn't expect were arms open wide in a welcoming embrace, warm eyes, a genuine smile, and a person who doesn't only care but seems to care for her. She lost her father, her sister and her mother, in that order, and when her father returns he comes back with a family of his own.

She felt betrayed, at that moment.

How could he dare to find happiness again when her whole life had been destroyed because of him? And even though she never would have said those words loud he could feel them, she was sure. So that's where she got it from – the instant guilt, the constant pain, the horrible pride that has broken her neck so often she wonders she's still alive. She doesn't like to see her father in herself, she doesn't like it at all. But she probably inherited his realism, as well. And then she met Finn, and now Celeste, and everything in her is screaming, begging, pleading, for them to let her go again. She doesn't want this awkwardness, doesn't want this silence which she is responsible for. The air is too thick to breathe in the living-room, the glances directed at her too open, too watchful, too expectant. She isn't made for this. Her life is dark shadows not bright candle light, photographs of dead victims instead of family portraits, other people's lives instead of family life. They will be disappointed; they will want her to leave again as soon as they know her better. She's no good when it comes to things like family dinners, holidays and being all nice and open. Whatever they expect of her, she cannot rise up to their expectations. What is she supposed to do?

Celeste starts before anyone else can say anything.

And the next glance Lilly, her father and her step-brother exchange are amused ones, even though the surprise and awkwardness still linger in the backgrounds of all of their minds. "Yes," Lilly says and her voice sounds strange in her own ears. "I understand." And she does understand. Probably more than Finn does, more than her father does, more than anyone will when she tells what has happened. Celeste's gaze is kind and soothing and Lilly knows she understands, and she feels like crying but smiles instead. We're a family, for God's sake. Yes, she guesses that is what they are. Whether she will be able to be part of it or not doesn't matter because she'll be called back whenever she tries to run. She'll be caught whenever she falls, she'll be reminded of light whenever she drowns in darkness. That's what family is for. And family is what they are. She hasn't been given a choice but Celeste knew she never would have made it by herself. So she did what people who care do: she decided for her.

Suddenly, she is.

Lilly always was something – she was daughter and elder sister and youngest colleague and first female detective and partner and investigator and hunter and prey. She was tired and down and lonely and sad and happy and thoughtful and independent and patient and intelligent. But she never simply is.

Lilly.

Now, she supposes, the time has come. She is, and they are, and she'll try. It can hurt, she knows that much, it can hurt and destroy things and shatter people. But she'll try. She won't regret it, not ever, she is pretty sure of it.

Not when this woman who isn't even related to her and whom she barely knows suddenly looks like a mother to her.