To the extraordinary Stana Katic. :D
A special thanks to All-I-Need for beta-reading my stuff. I really love you for your patience. –huggles-
Pools of Amber and Blue
Chapter 1
It was simple, somehow. He was gone and she was left alone – again. Her mother, Will… People walked into her life, pretended to care and then they disappeared. She knew she should get used to it. There wasn't much left to do. Work… Hell yeah, she still had work to do. It had been a charade then, believing in one thing, while hiding another. There were things she was good at, and things that they were good at in the same way. It still made her want to shoot somebody. Him or her, she wasn't sure of anything right now.
Beckett critically studied her nude reflection under the fluorescent light of her bathroom mirror. There were many similarities, hair color, eyes, the shape of her breasts… But nonetheless this woman was a stranger. There were dark circles under her eyes and some sort of sadness she thought she had surpassed a couple of years ago.
Not a long time ago she decided to stick to the things that she knew, like… who was the bad boy or who was lying in that dark and twisted murderous game she was joining day in and day out.
A mute sigh escaped her throat while her fingertips traced across a new scar. Gunshot wound, left shoulder, three weeks ago. Part of her hoped he'd come to the hospital, sitting next to her bed, annoying nurses… but when she opened her eyes there were Lanie and Esposito and Ryan. Kathrine Beckett wasn't an idiot. She knew she shouldn't let herself care so much. So she stopped, while trying to stabilize her weapon with a trembling left arm.
Experimentally rolling her shoulders and flexing her arms, she confirmed the placement of metal pins and screws deep inside the bone, when her phone was reminding her that she was gonna be late for work.
"Beckett…"
It was Esposito and she was out of the door before he even finished the details of their new case.
Deep down, some part of her was waiting for some kind of formula – 'You are extraordinary.' There was a time when she wished she'd never met him. She stopped going home at night, barely slept, except for the occasional nap she managed to work in over her night shifts. It was all too much sometimes, just how much this man had come to define the parameters of her world. There were times when she felt regret because he didn't seem to notice what he'd done to her. In order to save her, he would first have to find a way to break through his own ego.
She tried to remember when it happened, when everything became so much more than she was able to bear. Sometime in between. Maybe it was Coonan or the moment her apartment had been blown to bits… She couldn't remember, but he was there and she hated herself for the fact that it was so easy to blame him.
She decided that she would never let it get to her. So she didn't quite understand the dull ache in her chest.
While she was rushing through the streets of New York and some cheesy songs were trying to distract her she couldn't stop herself from remembering the one thing she didn't wanna think about.
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OB/GYN wasn't her favourite place to be. Her grandmother had died from ovarian cancer and seriously this whole stuff was just creepy. But Jancie Clarke was one of her closest friends and she knew she could trust her with her life and that was kind of the point.
She looked at the woman who sat next to her. These bright blue eyes and the red locks reminded her a little bit of Alexis. Maybe she would look a little like… No… Focus…
"I was shot about a week ago. Nothing serious, though… I got home yesterday, took a shower and stared at my reflection like 3 hours… Just to make sure everything was still there…"
Kate bit her lip her gaze transfixed to the ground.
"Kathy, what's the matter?"
Beckett knew this woman since the day her mother died, when she was just an intern in the ER. If she would've been asked about the person she trusted the most, Jan's face would pop into her mind right away. But this was different. This was something else entirely. Maybe because she wasn't used to be sick after all.
"I found a lump…"
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Now she was here. Another victim, another homicide she couldn't prevent. Nowadays she seemed to be surrounded by her failures every second. Esposito was looking for witnesses while Lanie was crawling into a smashed car.
"COD?"
"Body smashing…"
Kate rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. She was tired.
"So you'll first have to get him back…"
"Exactly… How are you, honey?"
"I'm fine…"
"Right…"
They didn't discuss the Castle-thing anymore, the lump-thing neither, mostly because she hadn't got the chance to tell her yet. She was her best friend but some things are better left in the dark. It was kind of a floating line – entirely up to the individual. She let it pass and tried to concentrate on the things that mattered. Dead people. Her gaze travelled across the crime scene and stopped at a purple leaf next to their victims foot.
Colours weren't the same anymore. They didn't glow – there weren't many varieties. Only shades of black and grey. A dull mist was covering her eyes. The world must've turned upside down and she realized, not for the first time in her life, that it actually hurt losing a person you loved – or at least a person you should've loved, just a little bit more. She frowned.
Blur.
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"Will I lose my breast?"
"I… don't know yet…" Jan's hesitation was something Kate just wasn't used to.
"Chemotherapy?"
"Yes…"
Kate didn't say anything. She was thinking about Castle and work and her father…
"Kathy?"
"I'm fine…"
TbC
A/N: Castle will come around, I promise…
