There's a strong possibility that this chapter (like most of this fic) could be Jossed, and I can't say for sure if I'll fix it if it is. This note is mostly aimed at anyone reading this story after said Jossing has occurred.

Hill of Our Home
Chapter Two

The neon lights across the pavement looped through their colors continually, like an amusement park ride from far away. Red, blue, and white. The colors went round and round the letters in different patterns and different orders, but all conveyed the same messages: beer and yes, we're open! There was another sign, also neon, but bright gold. It said Corona, and the light for its little lime was out.

Beckett took a long sip of coffee, still staring at the bar.

She could hear people talking through the glass, and the dusky notes of an electric guitar backed by bass. A TV was flashing through the open door, and she watched what looked like an ad for insurance between the silhouettes of the bar's patrons.

She was halfway through mid-shift, and Royce had gone to pick up their dinner.

She took another sip of coffee.

The day had been uneventful, as had the start of the night. Cruising through Midtown had only produced a couple kids tagging an apartment complex, and most of what dispatch had called for had been answered by other cops. She couldn't say she was necessarily unhappy about a quiet night, but neither could she say sitting aimlessly in the passenger side of the car all night was the best use of her time.

She let out a long breath, swirling her coffee around its styrofoam cup, and jumped slightly as the driver's side door opened.

"Hey," Royce greeted. Wasn't exactly warm and friendly, but it was a step up from the grunts she normally could expect from him.

"Hey," she echoed.

"Can you believe it?" he said, untying a plastic baggie and extracting several little white cartons, "Almost twenty-five bucks for beef and noodles."

"Did you get anything to drink?" she asked, ignoring that as he handed her a carton with some illegible scrawl on it.

"With how much coffee you've been putting away?"

She pursed her lips, tucking her mostly empty cup between her legs.

"No," he grinned, just slightly. "Not there, anyway. Went to the mini-mart across the street, picked up a Coke for me, water for you."

"Thanks," she popped open her container, but didn't see the noodles she'd ordered. "This is yours," she said, and they switched. He handed her her water, which she tucked in the car door.

"Twelve bucks for broccoli and beef," he said, shaking his head.

"And you don't even eat half of it," she replied, breaking her chopsticks apart and digging them into her dinner.

"What?" he looked at her, plastic fork suspended in the air.

"You don't eat the broccoli," she said and flipped the overhead light on, so she could see what she was doing.

"You my mother now?" he asked.

"Just an observation," she said and glanced back out the window, absently helping a heap of lo mein into her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Royce knock a piece of the offending vegetable off his fork and replace it with a chunk of beef.

Next week, they'd be partners a month.

She swallowed her noodles, which were greasy as hell, then crunched a snap pea.

Life on the job had been an adjustment, but she'd realized recently that she'd slipped into a routine of sorts. The thrill of clipping her belt and all its accessories around her waist every day had worn off, and she no longer went on patrol with the nagging fear that she'd be caught in a dark alley and blown to kibble by a weapon about the size of a bazooka.

It wasn't to say that she'd abandoned all caution—the first time she'd felt a gun hidden in a kid's waistband, her blood had run like ice the rest of the night—but she felt more at home in uniform, and in this car that smelled of plastics and less than stellar hygiene, than she previously would've thought possible.

But comfort came with its share of impatience, and increasingly she was leaving the precinct with an aching sort of frustration gnawing at her stomach and her heart. She didn't have access to archives, and her fantasies of being able to simply hop onto a computer and pull her mother's file had been dashed with the realization that there were no such computers on her level in the precinct. She had no authority to get the file, and no grounds or ability to investigate. The official file she'd requested long ago was useless, and she didn't believe obtaining another would be anymore helpful. More to the point, she wasn't sure she wanted anyone to know the reason she'd been drawn to law enforcement was lying in a shelf somewhere under One Police Plaza.

Suddenly feeling subdued, she picked half-heartedly at what remained of her noodles.

She had yet to come up with a plan to get into archives, and none seemed forth-coming. She wasn't even entirely sure what she'd do after she got there, but she was beginning to subscribe to the opinion that one should cross bridges as they came to them.

"Yeah, mine's kinda shitty too."

She snapped back to reality. "What?" she asked automatically, trying to rewind Royce's words.

"The food," he said. "Anyway, we should get rolling. Sixty-three's probably about up."

"Oh," she murmured, leaning back in her seat, fingers still wrapped around the little wooden sticks. "Yeah, alright." Clearing her throat, she focused her attention out the window again, at the cycling colors and their signs.

Royce seemed to pause for a beat before he turned the ignition key, but he said nothing as the engine roared to life and they slowly rolled back onto the Midtown side-street.

"My mother died when I was twenty-two," Beckett said after a lengthy silence, staring heavily at her newly refilled glass. "My junior year at NYU." Her face felt hot, but whether it was the admission or the alcohol, she didn't know. She pressed on, "You know, back then, I wasn't aiming to be a cop. Wasn't even sure what I was aiming for, but cop never occurred to me." She couldn't seem to look away from the reflection of an overhead light in the liquor, and she snorted softly at a memory. "Mom, you know, she wanted me to be a lawyer." She picked up the glass, swirling its contents around and around; the ice had melted off. "She never said it, but I knew that's what she wanted."

She downed it all in one gulp, not feeling it. Her lips felt numb.

"To tell the truth, law bored me to death." She fingered the glass. "And mom didn't talk about work much, but when she did, and sometimes when I saw those guys on TV, I just..." Her fingers slipped from glass to the little bowl, and she extracted a peanut. The shell felt hard and brittle as she compressed it between her fingers. "I didn't understand how she could listen to their stories all day. I don't know how she could believe them." She leaned on the bar, one elbow up so she could look at the shell as she turned it between her fingers. "Guess it figures now that's all I ever listen to. Bunch of stories, told by people who don't want us to think about them too much."

She could see Flannigan behind the peanut, and he was watching her as he flipped a coin slowly between his fingers. The metal caught the light as he turned it, over and over.

The peanut cracked with a soft crunch, and she raised another arm to flip the broken shell apart and get at what it protected. Clearing her throat, she slipped the nuts between her teeth and chewed slowly, staring off somewhere.

She was silent a long time, staring off at that little speck of nothing. Finally she said, "I come from a small family. Never knew my dad's half—and he never really talked about them. My grandmother died when I was a little girl, and my grandfather lived just long enough to see me graduate from high school." She cleared her throat again, reaching back into the little bowl. "There wasn't much to tear apart when mom died, just dad and me, but it did."

Swallowing, she broke apart the new shell, and she dropped the pieces to the floor. "I didn't want Royce or anyone else to know that. It felt like..." her voice trailed off as she chewed the peanuts, tasting the salt on the back of her teeth, "I dunno, I was holding back something very heavy with a really thin thread. I felt like if I let it go, it would just fall and fall, forever, and I'd never get it back, that piece of me."

She had a new peanut, and she rolled it between her hands as Flannigan continued flipping his coin, eyes on her. Exhaling, she dropped the shell onto the table and broke it with the side of her hand.

Picking through the wreckage, she found one of the nuts was smashed, its little brown wrapping sticking to a piece of the crushed shell. The other was still intact, and she stared at it as she picked it up. "Maybe that's why I was so vulnerable," she said after a beat. "Maybe that's why..." her eyes flicking to the bartender, then quickly back down at the nut. "why Royce started to see through me."
She could see the light bounce off the coin as she brushed the shell to the floor.

"Fold."

The cards hit the table with a soft thwak!, punctuated by a hand slapping on top of them.

"Shit cards, Trevino."

"It's Pass the Shit for a reason."

Two people snorted. One gestured for another beer.

Beckett leaned back, staring at her hand. Three fours, two nines, and discards. Much, much better than the crap she'd been dealt most of the previous games.

Restraining an exhale, she tossed her two junk cards onto the table, then made her stack and turned her first card over, revealing one of the nines. She hadn't done a lot of bluffing tonight, and she figured there was a possibility that between that and the beer her fellow cops had been consuming since their arrival at end of shift, she'd have a shot.

She finished off her own bottle, ignoring the now lukewarm water she'd brought with her from the car. Flannigan, already setting down a beer for Yates, replaced hers at her nod.

"So, we're sitting there outside the bar, right?" Murray continued his story, which still seemed to be entertaining him despite the three times he'd been interrupted. "And, I swear to god, the same guy we'd just fined for a D and D yesterday was taking a piss on the tree in front of our car."

"Raise," Beckett cut in, tossing a whole peanut—their equivalent to chips—onto the pile.

Royce, on her right, paused for a beat before adding his own peanut. "Call," he said.

"So I said to Ramirez, you know, 'You've gotta be kidding me,' " Murray reached into his pile of peanuts, which was considerably smaller than it had been two rounds ago. "Raise," he said, and he tossed two whole peanuts down, then continued, "And so we both got out of the car, and we both went up to him, and—you tell the rest, Ramirez."

"I don't want to tell the rest," Ramirez said, taking a swig of his beer. "I fold."

Everyone had gone, and Beckett flipped her next card to show one of her fours.

Trevino, after a moment's pause, said, "Pass."

"Anyway," Murray continued, "So we got out of the car, and the guy doesn't notice us, and he just keeps right on pissing, right? Like we weren't standing right there—"

"Bet another peanut," Beckett said, and she tossed it on the pile.

Murray resumed before Royce could name his play, "So we call out to him, and then he looks over, and I guess just then he notices the black and white two feet away from him and his manhood, and then he just peels off..."

Royce silently added two peanuts to the pile. He was eying Murray with an unreadable expression as he raised his bottle and took a sip.

"...and we start chasing after him. Call."

Everyone flipped their cards. Beckett showed another four.

"So he goes running out to the street, almost gets hit by a taxi, I swear to god—"

"Fold."

"—And then we almost get hit by another car chasing after him—"

Beckett fingered her diminishing supply of peanuts, then said, "Pass."

"—And I don't know what the hell the people on the street thought was going on. Mostly they just stood there and stared. But, then, you wouldn't believe what happened—"

"Raise," Royce tossed a peanut down.

"—This crazy chick walking one of those dogs that look like a mop without the stick, she pulls out a fucking taser—"

"Your turn, Murray," Yates said.

"Oh." He paused for a beat, glanced around the table, then said, "Call." After tossing down a peanut, he went on, "And by the time we get across the street, she's hit him twice."

Beckett and Royce flipped their next card. Murray, after a pause, followed suit.

"Raise," Beckett said.

"Swear to god, the guy's so piss-ass wasted, he thinks her little walking puffball is one of our dogs—"

"Fold," Royce said.

"—Starts begging me not to set the dog on him—"

"Your turn again," his partner said.

"I know." The change in tone was like a whipsaw. "I'm thinking. Just you and me now, right, Beckett?"

"What?" she started. Her attention had been drifting since the start of his tale, and she hadn't expected to be asked anything. "Oh. Yeah," she said.

Murray took a beat to look at her cards, then his own. He appeared to be working on a flush of diamonds.

"Call," he said finally, matching her bet.

They flipped their last cards.

"Shit," he muttered.

Suddenly feeling more attentive, Beckett smiled. "So what happened then?" she asked with as much genuine interest as she could muster, scooting the entire pile of peanuts toward her.

"What?" Murray seemed to be deflating. "Oh, we found a plug of heroin on him," he said. "Booked him."

There was a pause.

It seemed anticlimactic. Then again, it wasn't that interesting of a story to begin with.

Everyone else at the table seemed to be having similar thoughts.

"Alright," Ramirez said after a beat, rising. "Think that's enough for tonight. Beckett, how much I owe you?"

She looked down at her pile and started counting. Each nut was worth fifty cents, a whole shell a dollar. "Thirty-eight," she said eventually.

He nodded. As the first dealer, he held their money, and he slowly disbursed it all back. Trevino had won twenty-one, but almost everyone else had lost about ten. Beckett made eighteen.

Murray, now quieter, finished off the last of his beer and took back his money.

"Good game," Ramirez said. He'd only lost one or two bucks. "Thanks for coming, Beckett. We'd been one-down awhile."

She looked up as she tucked her winnings into her wallet. "Welcome," she said.

He grinned, "Next time, I'd say maybe we oughtta play strip-poker, but I've gotta feeling you'd be the only one left fully clothed." He paused as she smiled, heat coloring her cheeks, "And that's just a damn shame." Turning to his partner, who had gotten up but was munching peanuts, he said, "Come on, Murray. EBT tomorrow."

"Not if you don't shoot me first," he replied darkly, looking down at his empty beer bottle. Sighing, he followed Ramirez to the door, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he went.

Yates and Trevino, already on their feet, began making their own goodbyes, and they both shook hands with Beckett again. They left as Royce rose, jacket in hand.

"Come on, kid," he said, shrugging it on. "We can share a cab."

Beckett looked up at him and felt something inside her shift. "Thanks," she said, "but, uh, I'm gonna stay here a little longer."

She got up, reaching for both her bottles and her coat in preparation to move to the bar. She avoided his eyes.

He stood there as she took her seat and draped her coat over the back of the stool, and set her drinks down. She kept her eyes trained on the bottles on the shelf. Flannigan had gone around back.

Finally, he took a seat beside her. "Thought the boys might cheer you up," he said.

"What?" she asked, looking over at him.

He didn't say anything for a few beats. Then, "You know, it's hard for all of us, call like that. It's okay to be..." his voice trailed off as he thought. "Upset."

Her gut twisted itself into a knot, but she kept eye contact. "I'm fine," she lied.

"Alright."

She looked down at her bottle, then took a long, shallow sip, not really drinking so much as nursing.

"Beckett," Royce said, and he paused again, waiting for her to look at him.

She obliged, setting the bottle back down.

"I know I'm not the easiest guy to work with, but if you've gotta problem," he seemed to be choosing his words carefully, "you know, especially after something like that, it's okay to, uh...tell me." When she didn't say anything, he went on, "We'll see worse, and I need to know that you can handle yourself."

"Worried that I'll crack?" She took another drink, this one more deep.

"Should I be?"

She didn't reply, and he didn't say anything more.

A feeling of sickness wormed its way through her guts, and as she stared off at nothing, she flashed back.

They'd taken a disturbance call from dispatch, and had arrived to find a woman in a thick robe standing outside her apartment door. She'd heard odd noises on the fire escape, and suspected a burglar.

Beckett remembered very clearly that her robe had been a light, robin's egg blue, and the material looked like the polyester fibers that made up one of her throws at home. And she remembered as they knocked on the neighbor's door, and found it open, that it seemed odd this woman would go back to her apartment, and to bed, while she would still be up, in uniform, and would return to the streets.

"How many times have you gotten calls like that?" she asked suddenly, clutching her empty bottle. More than anything, she wanted another, or something stronger.

"Not often," Royce replied. He gestured to Flannigan, who had come out from the back room. "Sixteenth usually takes them."

"But often enough?" she pressed.

He paused, "Yeah."

Royce had shared a meaningful look with her, and he told the woman in the robin's egg blue robe to go back into her apartment. And then, for only the third time since the Academy, she drew her nine millimeter.

Her partner had opened the door, and she remembered only vaguely hearing him call out as her eyes adjusted to the light.

It was dark, and a lamp was out on the floor next to an overturned end table. A glass coffee table had been shattered, and she saw streetlight from outside glitter off the shards that littered the ground. A mug had spilled its contents on the carpet, and she saw dark stains just to the right.

"Bedroom," Royce breathed, and she followed him. Her gun felt hard and reassuring, and she felt sick at what they might find.

"You want another?"

She blinked, looking up to see Flannigan, who had given Royce another beer.

A desperate urge to say yes gripped her, but she shook her head. "I'll switch to water."

He nodded as she grabbed her old bottle from dinner, and she twisted it open, feeling like that had been a few centuries ago.

It tasted gross and unsatisfying, but she drank it anyway. She drank and she drank and she drank.

The door to the bedroom was sheltered by a partial wall that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room, and it seemed darker here than where they'd first walked in. Royce gestured for her to open the door as they stood in position, and she did, and he walked in first, gun upraised. She followed, and there seemed to be a moment that lasted forever as her eyes adjusted, and then that moment hadn't lasted long enough, and Royce was yelling something into his radio, and the universe seemed to spin in a million directions as she stared at the shadow on the bed.

The water bottle hit the bar again with a dull thud, and she screwed the cap back on. Royce was already halfway through his beer.

"Is there a way to know what happened to her?" she asked the plastic bottle. She paused and clarified, "Who did that to her?"

She could see Royce look at her, and she met his eyes again. "I'll call the Sixteenth tomorrow."

"Thanks," she said, and that seemed like the wrong thing to say, but she wasn't sure what would be any better.

She stared at the little mountain on the bottle.

And she was back in that room, and she blinked as the lights came on, temporarily blinding her. She saw the white sheets and the little dots of blood materialize from the blaze of color, and she saw the broken lamp on the floor, cord severed at the base.

Fear electrified the room, choked the air.

She couldn't breathe as she met her eyes, gun frozen where she'd pointed it. Hazel green, so like her own.

Royce was already at the bed, but she was rooted to the spot.

She couldn't be over twenty-five. No older than her.

She could hear her voice, broken as she sobbed...

"Come on, kid."

She snapped back to reality.

Royce was standing, and he lightly tapped her shoulder. "Come on, we'll share a cab back."

She wanted to stay, down a shot of scotch. Ten shots of scotch. Anything to erase those terrified hazel eyes. Anything to loosen the knot in her aching stomach.

But instead she got up. Slowly, she removed her coat from the stool, and she slipped into it. She felt the weight of her badge in an interior pocket as it pressed against her chest, and her gun was hard and reassuring against her hip—the only part of her belt she carried off duty.

"I usually take the bus," she heard herself say as they walked to the door.

Royce smiled, "Yeah, well, tonight you can afford a cab."

She didn't have the strength to argue as she followed him out into to the cool March night.

There are double rainbow kits in it for anyone who caught the reference (and another for whoever knows which cast member talked about double rainbows). Please drop a comment in review if you did.

Even if you didn't, I'd still like to see something from you, so go ahead and click the button.