A/N
Sooo, this first post is the prologue, and I'm actually terrified of writing this fic because it seems like it's going to be a very emotionally difficult one and I'll be experimenting a little with timelines. But, sometimes you have to try on what scares you, right? While this prologue is in first person perspective, the rest will be in third person perspective.
Some things to keep in mind. In my universe, Blake never had a child. I simply can't work it into a plausible timeline. When, between ambitiously working her up to a career-place with the FBI where she'd be put in charge of a high profile case like the Amerithrax, getting a fine education and a teaching job at Georgetown, and writing books, would she have had the time to be pregnant, and take care of a lethally sick child? Maybe if she had been depicted as somewhere in her late 50's in the show I could have bought that plotline, but no. Not in my world. Also, I just can't see her as a mother. Anyway. Apart from that little detail, I'm going to try to keep it as canon as I can while still making my own story. And put in my own canons as well. I did however change the timeline a little bit - I think it's said on the show that the Amerithrax case took place in -01 or so, but in this fic it's moved to -04.
I guess what's left to say is please be kind, and be patient. This one is hard to write and I've barely gotten started. :)
DC, August 2004
I'm not entirely sure what day it is. They seem to all meld together into an endless parade of events, and my task - one that is getting increasingly difficult to master - is to navigate through this fog without letting anyone know there even is a fog. My routine is rigid simply because if I lose track of what I'm doing and where I'm going next, I just… stop. Like a children's toy that's running low on batteries, I need to be nudged to keep on moving, and the only one there to nudge me is me. I struggle so hard to keep up appearances, but my entire life is falling apart like a house of cards, and if I don't get a miracle soon, it will come crashing down. Truth be told, it would almost be a blessing; at least then I could go home, lock the doors, close the curtains, and no longer have to worry about keeping up this tough façade. I am so, so tired. It takes everything I have to get out of bed in the morning, get dressed and go to work.
The media has mostly lost interest in me by now; it's been six months since the Amerithrax case blew up in my face, and like all locusts they move on when there is nothing more to devour. It wasn't enough that my career was ruined, they had to pry open my private life as well. For a few months it was so bad people I didn't even know came up to me and spat on me, called me names, and told me it was 'people like me' who destroyed America.
'People like me'. People who work long hours protecting the public from domestic terrorism, to catch the perpetrators and bring them to justice. People who are pushed to their limits and beyond to deliver a result, and sometimes have no choice but to present poor evidence or apprehend a suspect too soon, simply because the public - not to mention the superiors - expect the work to be done sooner than it can be done.
I'm only thirty-eight but I feel like I'm a hundred, and I wonder - but in a distant, almost impersonal way, as if this whole ordeal concerns a character in a TV show rather than myself - if this will be the day that I finally break. If it is, if I do break, I wonder if James will come home from his assignment with Doctors Without Borders. I wonder if he'd come home to hold me.
I doubt it.
I head for my first lecture after doping myself up with caffeine pills, washed down with lots of black coffee. I try everything, within legal limits, that keeps me going, but I had to draw the line at Red Bull. No doubt it would have kept me going, but the smell was just too awful. Like paint thinner. The ulcer that my treacherous body decided to develop - because clearly I needed to be punished for being stressed - does not take lightly on my near-constant coffee intake, but what can you do? You have to get the job done.
As I enter the classroom I glance at the students, making a quick profile of each of them, and my eyes fall upon a slim blonde. She's definitely one of those sports girls, no doubt a corn-fed scholarship girl from some hick town, desperate to escape. I know how prejudiced it sounds, but I was once one of them. Well. Sort of. Kansas City may not exactly be a hick town, but it certainly isn't Washington DC either.
As if she can feel my gaze lingering on her for a bit too long, she raises her head, looking straight into my eyes with her crystal clear blue, and then she smiles.
And I get my miracle.