Hello, friends. This piece will not have great length and will not have a detailed plot, as such, but will open for us the mind of the majestic Kate Beckett we see and display her vulnerabilities. It is based around Sara Bareilles's wonderful new song, Brave, which I have been playing on loop since yesterday. I thoroughly hope you enjoy reading! Please leave a review!

KT X

Green_Tiger_21

You could be amazing,

You could turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug.

Kate Beckett had spent a great number of years by now taking down suspects. Those suspects had such sick minds that some had made her shiver, some so bad she'd wanted to run from the room as fast as humanly possible, but she hadn't. She was stoic, stubborn and she always got her way. Some of the suspects could be talked into confessions in ten minutes. Others took the whole twenty-four hours for which Kate was allowed to hold them. But she always got her way. Even if it took all night, she would talk to that suspect, that known murderer, until he or she confessed to everything. And she could always tell when they were caving, because they slouched further down into their seats and hunched further over onto the table. Then she pulled out whatever her last card was – a threat, perhaps against them or against somebody close to them, or an offer, again, either a reduced sentence for them or for someone close to them. Always, in the end, Kate Beckett got her way. She beat them.

There were some felons up at Rikers who wanted to kill her, she knew. She'd told "Hal Lockwood" so. There were other people who had never been treated so fairly in their lives, and they not only respected her, they idolised her. They loved for her to visit them and see their fine behavioural performances, see their creative projects or their contribution to prison life. They almost seemed sad when they were at last transferred to the centre at which they would serve their full sentence. What she had told Lockwood was not a lie – if her fans had known she met with him on a weekly basis, an airtight schedule, they would have resented him for jealousy would have clouded their vision; but on the other hand there were those who, had they heard, would surely have encountered him at the first opportunity, intent on formulating a plot with a fellow criminal mastermind to end her life.

Her words had induced these acute feelings in those criminals, she knew. She got them a good deal, showed them such diplomatic an environment they had to be re-educated in commonplace etiquette, and they appreciated this greatly. Because she talked to the DA, she talked to them. She never passed off a suspect to an officer to handle; that would not be fair and she would not then be able to see the outcome of her successful investigations through to the very end. She talked for them, used words where they were allocated none, and they were grateful. They saw her as their saviours.

But she had also earned hate through her words. She'd lied about evidence or fabricated a witness and brought forth an enraged confession when really there was no convicting evidence. She'd performed so more than once with such little evidence she'd have been lucky if an application for a search warrant had been fruitful. She'd ended the free lives of men who felt they'd almost gotten away with it, and that angered them. Others were angered by her words because she spoke only the truth. She told them their motive was void, told them that he wasn't going to tell, or she wasn't cheating, or he was about to propose to you. They discovered they'd killed a friend or a loved one for nothing. They'd killed and were now serving their sentence because Kate Beckett had outsmarted them and they hated that. Some just hated that a woman had beaten them, but most personally blamed her for their incarceration.

There were yet more people who had opinions and feelings towards her because of her words. People couldn't look her in the eye when she said, "I'm so sorry for your loss," because she was finalising it: yes, they really were dead. Victims distrusted her because if she was talking to live ones, she was probably accusing them of something in order to generate an outcry of some useful name, some as yet unknown perpetrator. Children met her eyes with wary ones because Daddy had told them they were not going to see Mommy again, and she was somehow involved. They'd seen her talking to Daddy and he'd been crying. She must be at fault somewhere.

But, in the end, her words defined her. An outcry of, "NYPD!" told people of her power. A softly spoken, "Sorry," told listeners of her empathy. A "Thank you," revealed her gratitude and its depths within her, not merely its expected exterior, its automatic appearance. And a defiantly stated, "Always," heard by only one person as yet, was a solid and unshakeable message of her commitment and refusal to give up on anyone, even herself.

So why, then, were there words trapped deep within her, fighting to be heard, yet fiercely repressed by rationality? How could she, at this point, be warring so to find her voice. It was not like her.

It was not like Kate Beckett at all.