HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO!

Disclaimer: The story is mine, the character is not

Thank you so much for inspiring me and being a friend. It is appreciated more than you know.

Thanks to K for the beta & 3XK+J for being awesome Xx

Hard fought walls

Kate Beckett walks the halls of New York University a mere shadow of the bright, curious and optimistic girl she had once been. The girl with a rebellious streak who revelled in testing the limits of her morality and her parent's patience, now looks nothing like the beautiful girl with the haunted eyes reflected back at her in the glass of her classroom window.

The death of her mom had shaken her to the core and encompassed her in a thick blanket of grief. Murder had suddenly snatched away the world she once knew and transformed it from safe haven to one where danger lurked in every shadow.

Kate struggles to wrap her head around the manner in which her mom died. The intimacy of it. How her mother would have looked her murderer in the eye before the fatal blow took her life. Had she known she was going to die? It rattled inside her brain that it was too neat to simply be random gang violence. How are there no witnesses? Even in Washington Heights there must've been someone who had seen her mom enter the alleyway. Who could shed some light on what happened – But there's nothing.

At first, it'd been easy for Kate to ignore the signs of her father's descent into alcoholism, focused as she was on trying just to put one foot in front of the other. But as he falls deeper and deeper into the bottle, immobilized by his own grief, it's become undeniable that her father has a huge problem.

"Katie," the childhood term of endearment that her dad still refuses to stop calling her, no longer seems to fit; especially when more often than not, it feels like she is the parent. As much as it hurts to think about, she and her dad have formed a twisted kind of routine. Accustomed to coming home to an empty house at the end of her day, Kate then makes sure that her dad has clean clothes laid out and the fixings for coffee ready, so whenever he comes in, roaring drunk, she can ensure that he will be sobered up enough so he can be prepared for work the next day. Kate knows that the last thing her dad needs is to lose his job on top of losing his wife. But the comfort that she thought she'd have by coming home from Stanford has been replaced by a sense of responsibility and an intense loneliness.

The friends she'd had before she'd left for Stanford either avoid her because they don't know what to say or have given up trying to engage her. Or worse, they try to provoke her into taking risks; its behavior that she's no longer prepared to participate in. And she certainly isn't ready to let anyone new in, expose herself to more hurt. No, Kate Beckett is now a fortress.

She drifts from class to class in a fog, doing everything on autopilot, barely aware of what needs to be done. She goes through the motions, focused on putting one foot in front of the other, with hope in her heart that the platitudes offered by well-meaning friends and family that "time heals," is actually true. That one day she'll find peace.

She looks around the quad at the other students passing by. Some obviously rushing to get to their next class, others looking like they're meeting up with friends. All of them looking like their possibilities are endless. She envies them for having the carefree life she once had and lost in the thrust of a knife.

She tucks her legs up beneath her as she takes a seat on the grass of the quad. Reaching into her rucksack, she takes out a well-worn novel. She doesn't need to read it, she knows the words almost by heart, but just the feel of the pages beneath her fingertips brings her a sense of comfort. It makes her feel connected to her mom, the last book that she ever read. Taking in a deep breath, she swears she can smell the faintest hint of her mom's perfume, mingled with the distinctive musk smell that only books have and it calms the chaos around her.

'Derrick Storm' - Kate smiles as she lovingly strokes the title page. He's her one constant. The one thing in her life that she can truly depend on. He's always there when she needs him and he always finds justice for the victims, the kind of justice she knows her mom deserves. He gives her hope, even when the light at the end of the tunnel appears so far away, he reminds her to hold on.

Reviews are appreciated :)