Just a short story which has been running in my head for week, I had to get out of my system.
Set during the series' final, 'Let our angel leave' (minor change from the episode to fit in).
Since this has not been beta read, all mistakes are mine.
Feedback and reviews much welcomed, as always.
Ohh yeah and none of this belongs to me, I'm just borrowing them to have a little fun, no harm meant :p

Chapter 1 - Through sliding doors

I'm a coward. A lurking coward.

I've been standing here for the last two hours but yet I can't get my body to function and enter the room. I merely stand here, watching her. That's all I've being doing these past days. I come to the hospital, get to her room but still can't get in. I watch her and disappear before the others arrive at the end of the day. I watch her and I muse. Muse about my past as a private detective, at my new life. A new life no one knows about.

Yes I'm a coward. An ugly coward.

When I got the call I was so choked, I couldn't speak for the longest time. I stood there with the phone cradled against my chin, tears running down my cheeks, unable to speak. My "lover" was there but couldn't understand my reaction, heck I couldn't explain it myself. An argument ensued and said lover left, with no intention to ever come back, but I didn't pay many attention to it. My mind back three years ago, to that day she was first shot, and the night I decided to quit.

I did quit but my decision is back with a revenge to haunt me.
I put miles of land, dust and people between us; I was living on the west coast, now I live on the east's but distance didn't put my head to rest, nothing did for the longest time. Sure I coped, sure I went on with my life, but it wasn't just the same anymore.

I built a huge lie I'm still mesmerized Charles Townsend bought.
Maybe he didn't, maybe he knew all along I was a coward, a liar, and that I was better out of the Agency. That there was a wolf among his dear Angels.

And today I'm faced with the consequences of my actions. Would the present be any different if I didn't flee back then? Would she be in the same condition if I didn't run and faced my feelings?
So many questions which kept running around my head since I arrived here a couple days ago.

Neither of them has seen me. I've been hiding in the shadows ever since I arrived. I don't know why, guess I'm not particularly eager for them to see me so disraught. That'd raise too many questions.
Those damn questions I keep avoiding; those damn questions that keep haunting me.
It's not like they are new, I've been stuck with them for the past three years, but actually facing them and their possible consequences is a little too much.

So I hide, I lurk in the darkness.
But who am I kidding? There is no way I'm leaving before being sure she's safe. Before being sure she'll survive this second headshot and that it won't make any permanent damage.

In all the people I came accross in my life, as a police officer, as a private detective, as a now counsellor, I never met someone like her, someone so giving and caring it should be illegal. She doesn't deserve to be lying here, fighting once more for her life.

After all, she is the only human being I'd ever see myself live with, in a long-term relationship. One that involves shared secrets, breakfasts in bed, long steamy baths in hot tubes, cuddling on a sunny beach, all those things you do with the one you are head over hells in love with.

There I say it, it's out : I loved her back then and still do.
That's why I left, I couldn't stand being her closest friend anymore, I couldn't work next to her to finally see a nice guy enter her life and stash her from her feet, far away from me, into a much deserved life of happiness.

So I flew, I crushed my best friend's heart by leaving her one day, by having Charlie tell them all I got married over the summer.

But she'll never know why, she'll never know why I left, she'll never know she's the only reason of this runaway: I, Sabrina Duncan, am helplessly in love with my best friend, Kelly Garett.

That'd crush her, and I don't want to hurt her anymore than I already did.

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End of chapter 1 ... any thoughts? Please reviews very welcomed :)