A/N: Again, thanks a lot to those taking the time to review the last chapters! Those were very encouraging, so I decided to publish the next chapter right away.

This is still without beta and as said before… I'll replace the chapter with the corrected version when it is available ;)

Thanks a lot once more to Sop12345d for taking the time and doing the beta! You're great :)

Chapter 5: 2300 days

What a round number… 2300 days – more than six years – since he had left. And wasn't it telling that she did actually know the exact number of days?

"You okay, Chloe?" a gentle voice whispered at her, an equally gentle hand coming up to carefully rub her arm.

She nodded, truthfully not sure how to actually answer that question. But she was quite sure that she was okay – more so than she had been the last couple of years anyway. It was impossible for her to actually form an answer just yet, though.

She heard him sigh. The same sigh she had heard so often during the last years of their marriage – all those many years ago. This seemed to be a thing between them. Maybe that had been the reason they had finally broken up. Well, that and the fact that they simply hadn't been able to work through their problems.

"Blunt force trauma to the head," she heard Ella state; her voice full of tremor, fear, sadness. All those things, she herself was still missing somehow. She should feel something, shouldn't she?

She saw Ella swallow before she picked up a large rock from the ground showing it to them.

"By the looks of it… done by this rock."

"What a pathetic way to go", she heard Dan mutter but she couldn't bring herself to agree to it.

Her voice was steady, calm, as it always was when they were at a crime scene. "Let's wrap this one up. We'll have to give this case to someone else anyway."

And all of a sudden, they were back to normal, back to their jobs. Even if this one was supposed to be much closer to the heart - even if she didn't feel it just yet. And that was exactly why they had to give this case up. Chloe was right about that – as she always had been when it came to the job.

So she simply pretended that she didn't see the looks exchanged between Dan and Ella when she turned around and walked off the scene of this particular murder. The murder of her own husband. And for the hell of it, she couldn't bring herself to feel overly sad about it.

He was gone and in a way it did hurt - just not the way she would have expected. Not that they had been much of a family lately but they had still been married and somehow she had... arranged herself with it. Living next to each other more than actually living together. He had spent most of his evenings in a bar drinking himself stupid. And she had tried to put up a front, not wanting to admit that her daughter had lost another family. However promising it might have looked at the beginning.

The man she had married had long since left her, in a way - and she had accepted that. Life was easier this way. Thinking if everyone thought she was happy, maybe one day she actually would believe it herself as well.

It was easier than thinking everyone would leave her one way or another. Because there had been times when she had thought just that. They all left her. Somehow, they all ran out sooner or later. Glancing back at Dan, she pushed her feelings down - as she always did lately. Well, most of her men did anyway. Dan had been different. While he didn't exactly leave her for good… well, she just couldn't look at him like that anymore. He was a friend, a good friend, but nothing more - never would be. And maybe those last years had put even more of a rift between them. Because frankly, the only two things that still kept them connected were their jobs and their daughter.

Chloe sighed and got her phone out. She would have to call Trixie before this whole mess got public. A police lieutenant killed by a fucking rock in open public and nobody knew the better of it. There must have been like thirty people around this darn beach at the time and nobody had seen anything.

No, scratch that, they had seen something, a lot of something. Nobody had seen the killer though. So she can't but wonder if maybe, just maybe… No, that was impossible!

Again, she shook her head and finally called her daughter to tell her that her stepfather had been found dead. The lack of emotion in Trixie's voice rivaled her own. Well, like mother, like daughter probably. Although Trixie hadn't gotten along with Marcus for quite a while now.

"How did it happen?" her daughter asked over the phone, something strange in her voice.

"A rock to the head," Chloe answered lacking any emotions in her voice as well.

There was silence for what appeared to be a millennium but was probably only a few seconds.

"Thanks for calling, Mom. I… I'll be home on time."

Chloe merely nodded, not able to say anything more to that. Seemed both of them were handling that quite well, so what else was there to say? But the second her finger hovered over that red button on the touchscreen, she could have sworn she heard her daughter murmuring something else.

Something she couldn't quite understand, but it sounded a lot like, "Guess I owe you one now."

~~o0o~~

It had been an awfully silent evening when Chloe finally got home. True to her words, Trixie had been on time for a change. They had dinner – not talking about it. Sitting comfortably in front of the TV where they still didn't say a word.

Only when they finally turned in to bed, Trixie turned around to her. "You're okay with all this, Mom… Aren't you?"

That was when she finally smiled at her daughter and nodded. "I will be fine, Trix. Are you?"

Just like her mother, Trixie nodded and smiled back. Only her smile seemed more genuine than her mother's. But Chloe didn't want to think about that, about how it came to be that her daughter had turned this cold towards a man she herself hat once married because she had actually loved him.

So she pushed the thought away and gave her daughter a little peck on the temple – something Trixie hadn't tolerated for quite a while now. But today she didn't say anything about it, let her mother do as she obviously needed to do. She merely smiled at her mother and did something she hadn't done for an even longer time. Returning the fleeting kiss to her mom's cheek, she hugged her for just a second before retreating to her own room.

But it did something to Chloe, something she hadn't thought she would still have in her. It awoke some feelings that she'd buried so deep inside, she'd almost forgotten they used to be there to begin with.

Only then did she finally lay down in her bed; after a good shower to wash the sand of the beach away. She usually didn't go to the beach anymore. Not since…

No, not going there!

She pushed the memory back down as well as the feelings that were threatening to come up. But they kept lingering there, too close to the surface and it took all her power to keep them at bay. She would not break down and cry. Not over this, not for Marcus. She just couldn't. Not after all he had done. Or more of… what he hadn't done. Mostly for him not being there for her when she had needed him most.

So she closed her eyes and rolled herself up under the comforter. How long had it been since she had felt warm and safe and… loved? She didn't know anymore but it was too late anyway.

A long sigh escaped her when she finally felt sleep tug at her. Just one more step and she would be there. But then she felt the tingling again and she couldn't help but fight sleep to stay awake for just another minute or two. Just this once, she didn't want to miss out on him, to simply… open her eyes and he would be there.

Wouldn't he?

"I promised you, didn't I?"

That he had. He had promised to be there for her. And in a way he had - even if this had all just been in her imagination. How could he have been there otherwise? He left so long ago, never a call, never a sign and hell, she had been looking for him for all those years – even if she would never admit to it openly. She had continued to check on his accounts, the morgue, everywhere. Although the frequency had dropped over the years. As if he had dropped from the face of the Earth, so to speak.

There had been nothing. He was just… gone.

"Did you do this?" She heard herself whisper.

Nothing but silence was her answer. So he wasn't really there after all. Maybe she'd gone nuts quite a while ago. But she still refused to go to that place. The same place where she had last imagined him being there.

"Did you kill him?"

"I'm not allowed to kill humans."

This time the answer came almost immediately and once again she wondered if he was really there. Would he still be there if she actually opened her eyes? Standing there in her bedroom? And oh, how she would have loved to see that leery smile and hear the inappropriate comment about him finally making it to her bedside.

Only, she didn't - couldn't, because if this illusion was all she had left of him, she didn't want to destroy it. So she pulled her legs up even further and tried to keep the illusion alife. Why wouldn't the warmth finally return?

That was when she felt the mattress dip just a tiny bit and her heart skipped a beat, only to return with a much, much faster rhythm. This couldn't be true. He couldn't be here, not after all these years!

"Hush now, Detective", she heard his still so familiar voice and another sigh escaped her tightening throat. "Everything will look better in the morning."

"Promise?"

"Always."

And he was right. Because when her imagination finally got to the point where she could feel his arms come around him, for the first time in years she fell asleep peacefully and actually slept through the whole night. So what, if this was all just an imagination? Who cared?

She did feel better the next morning.

So when she got up and went over to her daughter's room, she just stood there and watched the sleeping form of a young woman who used to be her little baby girl. And she felt as if she could finally let go of everything and start anew.

She turned around and went to the living room, looking out of that giant window that was supposed to show one of the best views of LA. At that moment, she couldn't help but wonder if this illusion of her former partner would ever go away. Did she even want for it to go away? Since it was all she had left of him, she did not want to lose this last bit as well.

Not knowing how she got there, she suddenly stood before her dressing table. Not that she used this one often, but when Trixie was younger they used to sit there and she would groom her daughter's hair. Fond memories that made her smile.

Chloe opened the drawer and slowly her fingers glided over the single silver chain with a small, all smashed up bullet fixed to it. In awe she took it out, looking at it intensely. It had been such a long time since she had last worn it… Time for a change!

And when Trixie got up, yawning, and, as any good teenager does, complaining about it being way too early to be up and go to school, her mother was already standing in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, smiling brightly at her. For a fleeting moment, she could see her daughter wondering how she could hold up like this but she never voiced the question.

They went on from this, never looking back at those painful last years.

A/N: Just a little note at the side: I don't think Trixie would ever actually wish for Marcus to get killed. So in my mind she wished for him to get out of their life, so her mother can start a new life. Him dying would be Lucifer's take on getting Marcus to where he belongs a bit faster. So maybe he can share a loop or two with his brother Abel ;)

And as always... my little reminder to please take the time to review ;) Thank you!