Follows cannon up to and including 5x15. From the point where Diane and Kalinda arrive at the hospital, the story goes AU. A short prologue to set the stage.

Diane was able to reach Will's sisters while Kalinda was having difficulty reaching Alicia. After a few unanswered calls, she decided to try Eli. When Eli heard what had happened, he handed the phone to Alicia.

"Hello."

"Hi, Alicia. It's Kalinda."

She didn't understand why Kalinda would be calling her or why Eli would insist she take Kalinda's call. "There was shooting today at the courthouse. Will was caught in the crossfire. Diane and I are here at the hospital in the ER. All we know is that the doctors are working on him now."

She felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. "Is - is he - where was - the bullet" - she couldn't get her head to stop spinning in order to formulate a coherent sentence.

"I saw him before the paramedics arrived. Looked like one to the shoulder and one" - she had to take a deep breath to keep herself strong - "to the abdomen."

The room was starting to spin and feel suffocatingly too small.

"I'll update you as soon as we know anything more."

She managed a weak, "Thank you," before the call ended.

Eli came to her side and suggested she go to the hospital. The luncheon would manage without her, and she obviously wasn't in a condition to play the role of political wife right now.

Her car was here, but she didn't feel she could drive, so she called a cab.

On the ride to the hospital she checked her phone. There were three missed messages. One from Diane, one from Kalinda, and one from...Will. The past few months passed before her eyes in a blur. The war between them seemed so pointless, after all, of their hate was rooted in the fact that they loved each other. A love they had both tried passionately to eradicate from their hearts to no avail. He was hanging between life and death, and when she thought of all the hurtful comments she had hurled at him, the way she had stolen clients right from under his nose, she felt such shame and such guilt.

Her phone buzzed. It was Marilyn. Whatever it was, she wasn't interested right now. The investigation, her nonattendance, any other myriad of reasons Marilyn was calling, were the farthest thing from her mind. A few seconds later, her phone buzzed again, Eli. Now, she just cut it off. She was about at the hospital, and all she could think about right now was Will and her guilt.

The hospital was a buzz with action, to which Alicia was partially immune to as she made a beeline from the cab to the entrance and then began looking for Diane and Kalinda. She was vaguely aware of the small media presence outside of the hospital, likely looking to follow the story of the courthouse shooting with updates on the victims.

It didn't take her long to spot Diane and Kalinda and as she began to make her way over to them, she was surprised to see Marilyn with them. When they saw her, they returned her expectant, pleading gaze with looks that one might describe as pity mixed with fear of knowing you're the one to bestow bad news. Her heart sank as her fears intensified as to Will's fate.

Marilyn fumbled "I tried calling you."

"I know. I...was going to call you back." Well, maybe she wasn't, but…

Kalinda spoke next. "Maybe you should sit."

She was feeling impatient. She didn't want to be treated like she was fragile. "Just tell me. What is it?"

Diane, Kalinda, and Marilyn all looked back and forth one to the other. Diane silently agreed to take the lead. "Will was taken from the ER to the OR. Kalinda and I were going to wait for you to arrive before we went up to wait there."

"Okay, so let's go." She turned her head to look which way to the elevators.

Diane continued, "Not yet, Alicia." She turned her focus back to Diane, confusion written on her features as she tried to figure out what still needed to be said before they went up to the surgical floor. "After Kalinda called you, while you were on your way here, another ambulance arrived." Diane glanced at Kalinda and Marilyn, both silently giving her their consent to continue the narrative. "There was a multi-car accident involving several cars of the Governor's motorcade...including the car Peter was in."

Marilyn was here. Marilyn and Eli had tried calling her. There were media vans outside. They were all looking at her with that look of sadness mixed with empathy versus pity...her knees started to feel week as pieces to a puzzle started to fit together.

"Where - where's Peter?"

"The paramedics did everything they could, but...they were unable to save him."

She sat, staring, looking, but really seeing. The ER was busy, hectic, between the victims from the shooting and the victims from the accident, both those suffering physical wounds as well as those being treated for shock, the ER was full.

She heard sounds, but it sounded muffled, like as if she was underwater. She felt like she was under water. Her limbs felt heavy, like there was the extra resistance you feel in water that you don't against the air. She felt strapped for air, like there wasn't enough oxygen available.

Marilyn went to alert the hospital staff that Mrs. Florrick had arrived. The hospital social worker, the doctor who had pronounced Peter dead on arrival, both had wanted to speak with her.

Diane went up to the surgical floor to wait for news about Will, and Kalinda remained with Alicia, silently sitting in the chair next to her.

Marilyn came back over. "When we couldn't get a hold of you, Eli called the school, and we sent someone from the security detail to pick Zach and Grace up from school. No one was to say anything more than that their father had been in a car accident and that they were being brought to the hospital. They should probably be arriving any minute."

Alicia shook her head mutely. Zach and Grace. She'd have to explain this to Zach and Grace.

"Eli called Jackie as well. She's likely to arrive any minute as well."

By the time the other Florricks had arrived, the hospital social worker had moved Alicia from the main waiting area to a private room. Zach, Grace, and Jackie were brought there as well when they arrived. The social worker, who unfortunately has been in this role far too many times, breaks the news to the rest of the family.

Arrangements are made. Alicia is once again in the spotlight, this time as the widow at Peter's funeral and not as the collateral damage at a press conference. It all sort of feels the same.

Grace, Zach, Jackie, they all grieve. Alicia spends a few days at home, but then she's back at work. She's home by dinner time. She's cooking well balanced meals for the kids, which she only picks at. She cleans obsessively. There's likely not a speck of dust or particle of bacteria to be found in her apartment. Bathrooms, vacuuming, laundry, ironing. Busy, always busy doing something, anything except feeling.

Her mother, Owen, Cary, they're all worried about her. No one believes she's okay. Like there's a rule book for how one should act when they've been widowed. They must cry incessantly or else they're not dealing with it properly. She can't crumble. She can't afford to. Her children need her. Her firm needs her. "You don't need to be so strong" Owen tells her, just like after the scandal. But she does need to be strong. She doesn't know how to feel, how to let go, without drowning.

It still hasn't quite set in that Peter's gone infinitely. Maybe his brief stint in prison was a preparation for this permanent separation. Even with all the pain and shame of a few years ago, for the past twenty years they had been husband and wife. She wasn't sure how to be half of a whole.

Grace was finding solace through her faith. She had Connor and Zach had Nisa. Alicia was surprised and grateful to realize just how strong their relationships were.

The war between Florrick/Agos and L/G had cooled down. She had initiated a cooling of the waters just before this all happened, and after, there was sort of an unspoken truce between Alicia and Diane. Anyway, Diane hadn't been the one leading the war against Florrick/Agos, it had been Will, and Will was still not back at work. He had made it through his surgery and was still recovering.

While he was gone, several of the partners, always on the lookout for an opportunity to better their lot, began plotting how to take advantage of Will's absence. Once Damian and David Lee found out about Diane's reconciliation with Alicia, they attempted to try to rig a vote to oust her and Will as named partners. Fortunately, Kalinda got wind of the plan, and she was able to get enough dirt on Damian to force him out before he caused any more damage to the firm.

But before Damian left, he and David Lee found themselves with an opportunity to oppose Alicia in court. Although she and Diane had agreed to play fair, David and Damien felt no obligation to show "the traitor" that same goodwill. As if fighting fire with fire and turning what could have been easily settled into a contentious trial wasn't enough, there was substantial testimony about what one side believed occurs after death. Unlike Grace, Alicia did not have any sort of spiritual framework to deal with or understand Peter's loss. What if this man's views were true? It was too much.

When she left the courthouse, the sun was reflecting on the white snow, but everything seemed dark. Once she arrived home, she headed straight for her bed and fell into a long, deep sleep. As much as she had tried to disconnect from her emotions, her body wouldn't let her escape any longer. When she woke up, she had no interest in getting out of bed, in food. She claimed she must have come down with the flu. She wasn't sure if anyone bought that explanation. She didn't care if they did or not. No one chose to challenger her on it and just let her be. So there she stayed, in her bed for three days.

Since she had made herself unavailable, Cary was acting on his own, making decisions for the firm without her. When Jeffrey Grant's father came into the firm to discuss the wrongful prosecution case he wanted to file against the SA's office, Cary thought it looked like a good case and agreed to take it.

I know this chapter was more summary. I'm trying to somewhat follow cannon with this story, and most of this is how things occurred on the show (so just rewatch those episodes) with a few twists. As the story progresses, there will be more dialogue, character interaction, etc. I guess, you could consider all of this like background information for the coming chapters.

And I'm really interested to know what people think.