A/N: Well, I've no idea where this is going - actually, I do, but right now, I'm playing connecting the dots. Also, if any of you are familiar with The Killing, do not be surprised to see a character make an appearance :)

DISCLAIMER: not mine


Part 2: Burning

'Seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state

A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake

No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from my slumber

Until I realise that it was you who held me under'

(Florence Welch - Blinding, from Useless Magic, Lyrics and Poetry)


It's autumn in the world outside his dreams, but not here. Here, on this beach, it is forever summer. The sun warms his face and the sky is as endlessly blue as the sea lapping gently at his feet. There are sounds of happiness all around him. It is silent, yes, but it is the silence of his home: the wind blows through his wife's long hair and the air hums with the birdlike movements of his daughter's hands. He opens his eyes and, in the distance, two fluttering figures dance around a sandcastle. He waits. They will call to him, as they always do, as they always have - wrenching him out of his work, keeping the nightmares at bay, with a cool, soothing hand and the silent laughter of the child that could not hear his voice, but could always hear his thoughts.

He waits on these blue shores, but the figures - they no longer call to him. Further and further away they drift, dancing in the golden glow of a long forgotten sun.

It's autumn and he is alone.


It's autumn and school is in. Carrie fits in right away - she was always good at this, making people like her. She's smart enough to not fall behind, but cool enough not be a nerd. Plus, she's got a mean right hook and a bit of an attitude.

That's when the problems start.

It's small stuff at first. The smoke of her first cigarette warms her to the depths of her soul. She even refuses to cough it out when the smoke sandpapers her throat, the inside of her nose. Practice. All good things come with practice. And she gets a lot of that.

Ben and Jen are easy to fool - they don't care. They say they do, but they are as fake as the men who abducted her long ago. The only difference is that Ben and Jen are alive, and those men are…

Carina takes another drag out of her cigarette and forgets.


Kate fires her chief deputy and assistant chief within the first three days after her election, which was a mercifully brief affair, quickly sorted out by flattering posters - which Kate despised, but Reggie and her mother have framed in their respective houses - the mayor's endorsement - who Kate also despises, mostly because she's pretty sure Mayor Call-Me-Jim can barely remember her name on most days, but could pick her ass out from a sea of thousands - and Ray being an old friend of Dave's.

"This is no good way to get yourself re-elected, Kate", Ray cautions.

"Good."

Re-election is not what keeps Kate up at night.

Ray thinks Kate is unhinged and un-ready, but Now-Sheriff Macer is done 'soaking everything in' and 'being there to learn' and if Ray has a problem with that, he can go bitch to his buddy, Dave, once he's done settling himself down in his shitty ass condo in Florida. She itches to tell him that every time he calls, but she doesn't. She remembers all too clearly what happened the last time she threw a tantrum - hell, she still carries the marks, twin wounds below her breast, close to her heart.

This time, she isn't going to go cry to daddy, for the time of fathers is long gone. Hers, she dares not think of and Alejandro… well, sometimes, Kate wonders what kind of daughter she reminded Alejandro of. At the end of a long day, when she looks at her reflection in the mirror, she thinks of Alejandro's daughter and cries. Kate would wager that, if empathy can truly poison the brain, hers is pickled in venom.

(Dave Jennings settles in his chair with a glass of bourbon while Kate gingerly sits down on the couch with her soda. Her leg is healing well and the doc's given her a clean bill of health. She handed in her resignation from the Bureau along with it, which is probably why she's now here.

"My buddy, Ray, up north, was just telling me he was retiring. Might need someone to take his place."

Kate has always liked Dave, so she strives to be polite (Reggie complains that she's so brusque these days). "I'm out, Dave. But thanks."

"You're too young to be out, Kate. Too good. Now, now, let me finish. This's a nice place, Kate. And Ray's been a sheriff for many years. Small town, soccer moms and all that. Perfect place to kick back and find yourself."

Kate does not bother to correct Dave - that you don't always like what you find, so it's best to stop looking. He knows her well, after all. Kate's a thumper. She breaks down doors to the land of wolves and corpses because she needs to know. So, Kate takes the job because she needs to know if Dave'll ever stop fathering her if she does. Three months later she gets a star-shaped badge and a congratulatory email and never hears from Dave again. Problem solved.)

Kate's down to interviewing her twentieth candidate when Holder comes strutting in, all height and bones and secret drug problems, she can just tell. He's got quick and clever eyes and a nice smile, but who doesn't?

Kate waits until he's arranged his long limbs in the chair in front of her and then decides she likes his unassuming posture. For such a large man, he takes up very little space - he doesn't exactly wilt under her Full Metal Bitch stare (yeah, she's heard the gossip, she knows what she goes by around here), but there's a certain meekness about him that doesn't really fit his cocky entrance.

Kate's surprisingly okay with that. This isn't Arizona, this isn't Juarez, where houses are lined up with death and explosives. Everyone knows the address to the local meth lab. She's strong enough to break up a couple of bar fights a week and with a bit of luck, Holder will never have to flash anything else but a badge and his pearly whites to get his way.

Holder hands in a copy of his application and is all ma'ams and thank yous as Kate quizzes him on random points from his resume. Last nineteen men she'd seen had either leered, sneered or scoffed at her and their corny jokes had made her uncomfortable - not because she didn't get them, but because she now automatically assumes they're hiding something: guns, plots, death.

What Holder tries to hide is written in the lines of his face and the cloudy blue of his eyes. So, Kate decides to cut to the chase.

"Okay then, Stephen, level with me. Coke?" Kate has no idea why she asked that when she knows the truth - she forgets how far the border really is from here.

In his chair across from her, Holder seems to shrink, but he braves her eyes nonetheless.

"Meth. Been clean 8 months now, though."

"Any identifying marks?"

"Cross on my back and Serenity in my heart, but no gang signs, ma'am, no."

"Why'd you quit?"

Holder smiles again and Kate gets a shiver. He smiles a father's smile.

"My kid got old enough to hate me and there was another on the way. I didn't want to turn into a monster for the children I helped bring into the world."

Kate reaches for her drawer and pulls out a shiny gold star. For a moment, she thinks of how little it means to her now that she knows the rivers of blood and mountain of corpses it's built out of, but for the man in front of her it might mean the world. And his world can still be clean. His children need not ever know how close the monsters really are. How much damage their kind eyes and gentle hands can do.

Kate tosses Holder the badge and signals Miriam from front desk to come in.

"Congratulations, Deputy Holder. Now, let's see if we can find you an uniform that fits."

Holder clutches the badge to his chest and tries to scramble out of his chair at the same time.

"I won't let you down, ma'am."

Kate almost says don't let your children down, but nods silently instead.

Her voice - it has long been gone.


There is a house on the shore of his dreams. A white house, with wide open doors and windows. There are white curtains billowing in the breeze. He remembers those curtains from a dream outside of his dreams. He remembers the shape of the woman behind the curtains - a bruised and battered silhouette with porcelain fine skin and eyes as blue as the sun-kissed sea. He remembers warmth that he extinguished with the cold press of a gun and this isn't a memory that he treasures, not one he chooses to bring with him here, on the shores of his dreams. Unforgivable things he's done, lives he's taken or destroyed, seem meaningless when you walk univited into the soul of another with dirty feet.

But here it is, the house on the shore of his dreams. If he turns around, he can see a white bed past the billowing curtains. He has no memory of this woman - of Kate, sleeping on sheets of white satin. Only the dead follow him here and he walked away from her with her soul, but not with her life. That, he has gifted her with. A life to make her stronger in a world where she could be weak and frail and so, so beautiful...

Kate is alive here and in the real world as well and wouldn't she laugh at him now? At the assassin trapped between two worlds, awake only to feel pain, asleep only to feel remorse?

Alejandro turns around and looks out into the distance, past the white curtains of the white house, at the bed where Kate is sleeping with her back to him, always so foolish, always so trusting.

He knows she would not laugh though. He will only ever have her tears, her blue eyes sorrowful, wanting, waiting for a glimpse of the soul he forgot he had. A soul he's not sure he still has.

Kate is sleeping in his white house, in his white bed and for a moment, Alejandro doesn't feel so alone anymore.


Carina cannot explain it.

They make her angry, these jokes. The constant wanking.

That tight ass, d'ya see that? I'd tap that in a heartbeat.

Think she likes it rough? Fuck her blind, man.

Whip out them 'cuffs, Sheriff Katie.

It's everywhere at school these days.

Sheriff Katie moves in the house next door and Jen wrinkles her nose, while Ben blends his smoothies a little harder. (Carina's only been in school for a couple of months, but Jen insists on breakfasts and dinners together. She packs her lunch every day, but Carina never eats it. Food tastes funny these days.)

People talk around the block about Sheriff Katie and the big, empty house she moved in.

No husband, no kids, no family. What'd she need that big house for?

Ben and Jen talk about her during dinner.

She's not going to last long.

Carina excuses herself and takes her upset tummy to bed.

It's not the food that upsets her - it's Ben, it's Jen, and Mr. and Mrs. Hancock from across the street and the boys at school.

It's Sheriff Katie moving in a big, empty house and not giving a fuck about Ben and Jen and the Hancocks and the boys in her school, walking tall, untouched and untouchable, like in a dream.

It's Sheriff Katie and her blue eyes and blonde hair she watched her dye all by herself on a Wednesday night and that small smile she has every time they meet.

Sheriff Katie is a beacon of light, burning bright, burning Carina's cardboard world to the ground. Like a moth drawn to the flame, Carina follows her new neighbour day in and day out, basking in Sheriff Katie's obliviousness. From her bedroom window on the second floor, Carina can see Kate Macer stop being Sheriff for the precious hours she allows herself to sleep. Carina should feel like a perv, watching this one woman's life, like a cheap peep-show, except there is nothing cheap about the clean, quiet life of Kate Macer.

There are no locked doors in the house next to Carina's and the light is always on - that light that always looks so inviting and halos around Sheriff Katie's tightly bound hair whenever she's in the kitchen, drinking milk straight from the bottle.

She's seen Sheriff Katie in T-shirts so worn they're probably older the sin - uglier too, but Carina's never seen Sheriff Katie with her hair down, not even at home. Carina would also like to inform Mr and Mrs Hancock that Sheriff Katie's big, empty house is so neat and tidy you could eat off the floor - something Joyce and Howard, who have lost their housekeeper because they're assholes, could not do on their dining room table.

There is something comforting in watching Sheriff Katie live a solitary life, an insulated life, a life of cold lights and late night dinners for one, because there is more warmth there than in a her own big, empty house. Carina dreams that she is the wind tearing down Sheriff Katie's home, whipping her hair free. In her dreams, Carina's wails are a roar.

See me, see me.

Call out my name.

Save me.


She is his daughter, most beautiful when frail.

She is his wife, the sun of his life, so bright it burns him.

She is himself, an extension of his soul, the mirror image of everything he fought for, all those years, in all those courts.

She is sleeping in his white bed, in the white house of his dreams.

His house is on fire.


Alejandro wakes.


'I'm sorry if you

couldn't find

me

I have been

In the

woods.

I put myself

there because

I couldn't be good.

I have been

running with

foxes and

hunting with crows.

And I have

found myself

a home

where no body goes.'

(Florence Welch - Useless Magic, Lyrics and Poetry)


A/N: Review? :D