A/N: I don't think there's any canon on Caro's family or middle name, so I just made it up.


They buried me on a Saturday.

There was a short church service in the morning. Everyone I knew came.

Mike broke his vow of never entering a church again. He sat right in the front row.

Afterward, they gathered around my grave. I looked at all the people who had come to mourn me – friends, the MCS squad, one or two of my neighbors, and a few dozen other officers. Former partners, members of my old precincts, some FBI agents. All there to pay their respects to me, the fallen officer.

No relatives. I hadn't had anyone I could call family in a long time.

I watched it all from a headstone nearby.

There were hundreds of flowers on my casket, tributes to me from people I'd known and even from some I hadn't. Carnations, daisies, baby's breath, chrysanthemums, sunflowers, irises, lilacs, and roses of all colors.

The crowd gradually dispersed once the priest was finished. After awhile, only Mike, Bobby, and Alex remained. The three of them stood there in silence, a normally odd group that was somehow perfect at that moment.

I stood on the grave of someone long forgotten and watched them remember me. They read the inscription on my headstone:

Carolyn Isabel Barek

October 2, 1964 – May 14, 2009

Killed in the Line of Duty

"To Protect and Serve"

You will never be forgotten

We pledge to you today

A hallowed place within our hearts

Is where you'll always stay

After a few minutes, Alex gave Mike a comforting hug. With one last look at my grave, she walked off. Bobby followed shortly behind her, leaving Mike alone with his thoughts.

He'd been quiet today, hardly saying a word throughout my entire funeral ceremony. He was quiet all the time now. My death had changed him.

The silence was uninterrupted except by his footsteps up to my casket. Resting one hand on its surface, he brought the other to the place where my head was covered by smooth, polished mahogany. There he placed a single white lily. It stood out among the mass of arrangements, the flowers left there by those merely observing tradition. I'd told him once that lilies were my favorite flower. He always got me pink ones on my birthday.

As he turned his gaze away from my body, he looked straight at where my spirit was standing, arms crossed in my usual pose of stubbornness toward him.

I think he might have seen me that day. I wanted so badly for him to be able to, and I knew he wanted nothing more than for me to be near him again.

For a moment, time ceased to pass as we stared at each other. The look he gave me was heartbreaking. I could see in his eyes the desperate hope that this was real.

I smiled, telling him in my own way that I really was with him. I saw his eyes brighten at it. I tried to speak, to tell him all the things that I never had in life, but my ethereal form didn't let me.

As abruptly as I had appeared, I was gone. I felt myself being whisked away back to Heaven. My words were left unspoken.

There are some barriers that no one can cross.


It took me awhile to get used to Heaven.

It's beautiful up here. Heaven has everything you could ever want, with one glaring exception: the absence of those we leave behind.

That's what I couldn't get used to. I could still see everything that was happening down on Earth now that I was gone. I just wasn't a part of it anymore.

It eventually became my favorite part of Heaven, watching people as they went about their day.

Some days I would watch my old squad go about their business deciphering evidence, interviewing witnesses, interrogating suspects, and eventually solving the crime. My view of the world was much clearer from my new vantage point. People are surprisingly easy to read when you aren't around for them to hide from.

I didn't always watch my former colleagues. Sometimes I'd pick someone off the street and watch them wander around New York, just to see how they lived. I always prayed for them afterward, for God to help them along in their lives.

I didn't always pick New Yorkers, either. I watched people from all over the country. Once I followed a kindergarten teacher from Oklahoma. I prayed extra hard for her.

Occasionally I'd even use someone from another country. One time I tagged along with a resistance fighter in North Korea. That night I thanked God for letting me live in America.

But mostly I watched Mike.

I would see him in the squad room, there physically but not mentally. I knew he thought about me every day, if not every minute.

I could see how everyone but the captain, Bobby, and Alex shrunk away, not sure how to act around him anymore.

I would watch him go home at night to the apartment we had shared, the only place he ever let himself dwell on me. He would sit on our couch and stare for hours at his favorite picture of us, the one from the Christmas party. He always teased me and said that the red dress I was wearing in the picture made him want to stay in the apartment all night instead of going out. The comment was always accompanied by one of his suggestive eyebrow wiggles, which in turn led to him getting smacked upside the head.

He spent endless hours just sitting around the apartment, reliving all the memories of me that came with the surroundings. I was everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. He saw me in everything, especially our 3rd floor walkup. It didn't take long for him to move to a new apartment.

He changed dramatically in the aftermath of my murder. The old playful Mike was replaced with a new subdued version. He brushed off almost everyone who tried to talk to him and never went out anymore.

I wanted to tell him that it was okay to be happy again, that he was allowed to have fun. He needed the friends he had left to help him get through this.

After awhile, he started to return to the Mike I had known and loved. He smiled again. Sometimes he laughed. Eventually he even started to crack jokes.

He never quite went back to normal, though. He had all the appearances of the Mike he'd been with me. But in his most private moments, the ones no one but us ever saw, he would pull out my picture and let the tears fall.