**This story was my first ever fanfic, in fall 2014. I did a MAJOR revision in January 2016, so even if you're read it before, you may want to start again with chapter 1. I promise it's now significantly better.**

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or ideas from The Killing. It's all just for fun.

Spoilers: Watch the series finale before reading this!

As much as she shied away from staying in one place even for a short time, Sarah Linden had to admit that a walk on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey was not the worst thing she could be doing. The sea air did smell good after so many consecutive days in the car, and the junk food sold on the boardwalk was an interesting change from highway rest stops. Not that she ever ate that much, of course. But that day on the boardwalk, her hot dog and funnel cake tasted good, and she managed not to let the very aggressive seagulls steal any of either one, which was not as easy as it sounds.

She tried to remember when she'd last eaten, but as usual, she couldn't be sure. What state had she been in? She couldn't even remember that much. She shook her head at herself, knowing that she needed to do better, but just unable to bring herself to care about such mundane details as food. When she got hungry, she ate. Most of the time she didn't even notice until she'd missed a few meals in a row.

It wasn't something she'd really kept track of in almost as long as she could remember. Since he was a little kid, Jack had always made sure that she knew when it was time to eat, the hungry growing boy that he had been. And Rick, too. He liked to take her out to fancy places, back when they were together. He'd even been a pretty good cook, which was great, because Linden was pretty hopeless in the kitchen. She could handle the basics, stuff that appeased Jack like macaroni and cheese, but never ventured beyond that. Food had never been much of a concern to her. Maybe if she'd had someone to teach her how to cook growing up… but she hadn't.

And then, of course, when they'd worked together, Holder had taken over the job of forcing her to eat. Junk food for the most part, though there had been a very few times when he'd cooked for her. He was a surprisingly good cook, too.

She stopped, her food halfway to her mouth, then slowly put it back down on the plate, her appetite suddenly gone. Where in the world had that thought come from? She'd slowly been getting better about letting the past sneak up and ambush her like that, so it surprised her when that thought appeared out of nowhere in her head.

Well it's junk food, but at least you're eating! And that food don't come from vending machines, so that's two points in your favor! The thought formed in her head so quickly that there was no time to stop it. She immediately felt a rush of something between panic and annoyance, and shook her head to physically push the thoughts of him out of her mind.

After all this time, he would still occasionally pop up in her head at the most random times. She couldn't really predict when she'd see something that made her think of him, which drove her crazy. All I want is to forget, she begged herself silently as her eyes closed. She sat perfectly still for a second and exhaled deliberately, trying to clear her mind. It no longer mattered to her whether or not the seagulls took her food.

When she left the bench where she'd been sitting with her food, it was 1:00 p.m. and oppressively hot and humid. As Linden walked down toward the water, the warm breeze whipped her red hair into her face, despite her trademark pony tail, but didn't provide any relief from the heat. She noticed that a few shells had washed up with the tide, but she stepped around them and kept walking, now moving parallel to the water. She wasn't a shell collector. She didn't really collect anything except bad memories, situations that she wanted to forget.

I just leave a trail of destruction in my wake, she thought bitterly.

She couldn't explain what had brought her out to the beach on this unseasonably warm day. The beach had never been especially appealing to her. Having lived her life in a climate where it seemed to always be raining, she hadn't had much chance to go to the beach. Besides, she didn't have the right complexion for laying in the sun. Her fair skin was covered in freckles even when she didn't go near sunlight, and it seemed like no matter how much sunblock she might cover herself with, she would be as red as a lobster within twenty minutes. All this added up to her not being a beach girl.

It was unusually hot for the New Jersey shore in late September, and Linden felt sweat collecting on her skin despite the heavy wind. She had almost the whole beach to herself, despite the clear, warm day. Activity along the shore always took a nose dive after Labor Day and the start of the new school year when the tourists cleared out, so on the weekdays in the fall it was easy to forget how crowded it had been only a few short weeks ago. There weren't many other people on the beach with Linden that day, and only a few locals in the shops along the boardwalk.

As she walked slowly back up the beach she looked down at her sneakers, which were filling with sand with each step she took. She stopped for a moment and pulled off her shoes and socks, deciding it was easier to just carry them. Besides, the feeling of sand beneath her feet was not completely unpleasant, just unfamiliar. She realized that she kind of liked it, actually. Maybe she'd walk a little farther. It wasn't as though she had anywhere she needed to be…

Suddenly the familiar scent of cigarette smoke wafted through the air, startling her out of the trance like state the ocean had lulled her into. She whipped her head around as if she expected to see… who, exactly? She shook her head at her own stupidity. Out of the tens of millions of Americans who smoke, she expected – hoped? – that one particular one happened to be standing nearby? One who lived 3,000 miles from her current location and had no idea where she was because she hadn't talked to him in… how long had it been? A year? The last time she'd talked to him had been that day at St. George's when she'd pulled a gun on him. And she was somehow hoping that he would just show up here out of the blue, that he didn't hate her – which she knew that he did – and… then what?

You are a special kind of delusional, she told herself. She'd thought she'd gotten all this out of her system, but realized to her irritation that apparently she hadn't.

She let out a heavy sigh, and mumbled "Dammit, Holder!" under her breath, slipped her socks and shoes back on quickly, and stomped back to her car. This pit stop was over, and she was running again.

…

Holder looked down at the coffee stained table in front of him and sighed. With as much time as he spent here, he felt as though he constantly watched the waitresses spraying the tables with cleaning solution and then wiping them down with their cloths in between customers. As often as he saw these tables wiped, he'd have expected them to sparkle. But there was something about this place. The tables never seemed to quite get clean, just like food never seemed to taste quite right. It was as though everything about the diner was almost, but not quite, right.

Maybe that was what he liked about it, he told himself. After all, that was pretty much the story of his life. Always trying, but never quite feeling like he was getting things right.

Which was why the fact that things were going well at work lately took him so much by surprise. Somehow in the past nine or ten months, he'd become some kind of magician. He didn't even know how he was doing it lately. It was like all of a sudden, he could just read people better. He solved cases as if they were puzzles and the pieces fit easily together. Could it have something to do with the fact that he spent pretty much all of his waking time on whatever case he was working? Well, maybe. But he'd done that since he started at the SPD. That part wasn't different.

Maybe not, he thought, but you know what the difference is. He shook his head. No, it's not because she's gone. He refused to think that working with Linden had been somehow been holding back these super skills that he seemed to have developed since she'd left.

No, you idiot, the voice in his head said. It's not that you're good at what you do because she's gone. You're good at what you do because you learned from the best. No matter how fucked up Linden may have been – and you know all about that first-hand – you can't deny that she was very, very good at her job. Maybe you got lucky and that rubbed off on you. You were definitely a naïve, cocky hothead when you started working with her, that's for sure.

He supposed that he could accept the idea that he'd learned a lot of what he knew from Linden. He stared at the far wall of the diner for lack of anything better to look at, just thinking. He knew that he really needed to get her out of his head. It had been long enough that he shouldn't still be thinking about her, the woman who had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had never really been his friend. Except that it wasn't that easy. Every time he thought that he'd managed to exorcise her from his thoughts, there she was, front and center again. She was just as frustrating in his head as she'd been in real life. Figures, he thought in annoyance.

He forced his thoughts onto a different topic, something trivial. Like how did he end up in this greasy diner, again, anyway? He swore every time he came here that he wasn't coming back. Caroline, who was now his ex, had been there with him only once, and after that she had refused to go back. So why didn't this place bother him, at least not enough to stop going? There were plenty of other diners where he could have eaten, after all. Or he could have just made something at home… it's not as though he wasn't a pretty damn good cook. But he spent so much time working these days, there never seemed to be any food in his apartment to cook. It was easier to stop and grab something than it was to actually go shopping.

But why this diner? Easy, he told himself. It's near work. I know the menu by heart, even if nothing on it is really that good. The waitresses all know me, and sometimes they give me free food. You can't argue with free food! Those were good enough reasons, right?

Sure, unless you're going to be honest with himself. There was that irritating voice in his head again. It was always ready to point out the things that he didn't want to know. No, the real reason he kept coming back to this place was that he'd been there with Linden on so many occasions. Sometimes they'd been pissed at each other, sometimes they'd been on good terms. Most of the time, one of them had been going through something traumatic and awful. That pretty much summed up the whole time he'd known her, actually. It was as though they had taken turns, one day being the strong one, the next day being the one leaning on the other's shoulder, so to speak. Just about every time they'd been in there, he'd been forcing her to order something, because the woman did not seem to ever eat if he didn't make her. Dammit, but she was frustrating. She was also long gone, and now he sat alone in the greasy booth, ordering food that wasn't even very good because it reminded him of her.

Dammit, Linden.

He found himself suddenly wondering if she ever ate anything these days, without him there to make her. That's stupid, he told himself. Of course she's eating. She doesn't need me. She made that much perfectly clear.

Sighing loudly, he tried to ignore the stab of pain in his chest as it came and then quickly went. Over time, he'd gotten better at forcing it to go away, he just hadn't managed to stop it from happening in the first place when he remembered that day. He wondered if it would always feel like this, so raw. It won't, he told himself, but he only half believed it.

He dropped his money beside the bill on the table, suddenly needing to leave this place and the memories it held. As much as he came here because he wanted to remember, at the same time he wished he could just forget. It would be so much easier that way.