A/N: Big departure from my normal style. I normally don't really like first person, but it seemed to be the only way to do this one. So…here.

My friend over at Brooklyn Homicide had warned me. "You'll never be better than Alex, Casey," she told me solemnly. "You might win all their cases, get all the warrants they want, anything, but you will never be able to complete with a ghost. Never." I shrugged it off, knowing she was right. Not wanting to admit it.

I sympathized with the unit, honest to God I did. Nobody should be lost like that, and I was prepared to be kind and patient and understanding. I just got tired, I suppose. Tired of knowing that no matter what I did, I was always going to be second best. Of being treated as an afterthought. I would never measure up to their memory of this deified lawyer, and wondered why I should even try. I jumped through their hoops, I ran hard and I ran fast, but I was never able to catch up. Always just a little bit behind. Always on the outside looking in.

All I wanted was to be accepted, really. To be a part of their club. It was like high school all over again, and I would have thought we'd be beyond that, but cliques are universal. I walk in and conversations conveniently wind down or fall into whispers; if I tell them that they need more evidence for a warrant they seem to think I'm against them. I can hear the unspoken words – "Alex would have been able to do it." It's all I can do to keep from telling them, "Yeah, well, she's not here and I am." So deal with it. You're stuck with me. Alex is dead.

Perhaps it was because she was beautiful. I've come up with many theories over the months I've been here, and this is the latest. I've seen her picture on the desks of the detectives, I saw the news releases. I know it's ridiculous; she was a damn good lawyer and she didn't get that from her face. But I also know that I am not beautiful. Passable, maybe, and I'd like to think as good a lawyer, but not beautiful. And in this life there are so many things you can't change,

Most likely, of course, it was just the way she died. Anyone who dies a violent death is going to be remembered, her scar burnt into the minds of this unit. Her ghost haunted us all, daring us to forget her.

But in this job, nothing is what it seems at first, Picnic coolers contain crumpled children and the dead walk in my office door like it's just another day. Who else is going to clean up after them? Me, that's who. That's my job now. But I won't be good enough, and they need a savior. And I saw the looks on their faces. Alex. A ghost returned. Lazarus, stripping his bandages off. Walking out from stone.

It's hard to describe the situation I was in, preparing Alex for the witness stand. "I think you're ready," I told her. And I did. It wasn't like she didn't know the drill; that was the problem.

"Are you?"

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised; she was one of them, after all. She read my expression correctly. I refused to give her points for that. "Oh, Casey, I'm sorry," she said, always gracious. Of course, she had to take the moral high road while my first impulse was to stick my tongue out at her.

She'll come in here in a few minutes, I know. She'll tell her story and she'll walk out a hero. Everyone's eyes on her. I suppose she'll sink back into anonymity, pull on another mask, assume a new name. Fall into a different life. But she'll never disappear completely. I know. She'll always be here. Haunting them and haunting me.