Part two for you. I'm aiming to average about one chapter a week with this fic, but I do have a rare and (hopefully) peaceful staycation coming up next week so I'm determined to dig my heels in and get a bunch plotted out/written. Thanks to all who left feedback on the first installment, it's appreciated!

Warning for some Vic-style language in this chapter.

Dreamcatcher
Part II

"Son of a bitch!"

The small wastebasket skidded across the office, and Vic Moretti vaguely considered the inherent misdirection in that particular insult. Why curse the parent when the son is the dickhead at fault? Maybe she should use "Motherfucker" instead…? Nah. Same problem. How was it fair that all the most common slurs used against men end up being hurtful to women in the end?

There was just something about the men in her life lately that inspired a violent reaction. Or, in this particular case, the man formerly in her life. Not that it should be a surprise that Sean was still finding a way to stick it to her even after their divorce— it was certainly safe to say that his transfer to Australia had not caused the fabled 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' effect. Communication was sparse, but he always managed to get some kind of dig in about her and Walt between his latest excuses as to why he hadn't forked over the money he owed her.

When Walt had served her the divorce papers, she'd been sure. Her marriage to Sean had been deteriorating for so long, with both of them in denial or simply unwilling to make life even more difficult by upsetting the stagnant and acrimonious status quo, it had only been a matter of time. Sean had been the first to reach the end of his rope, and Vic thought she'd left enough slack to swing herself to safety. Maybe she'd been wrong about that too, like she apparently had about so many other things…

Vic may have been content to sign the divorce papers ("Got a pen?"), but she certainly wasn't stupid. She'd read the document carefully and everything had seemed to be in order; Sean had clearly wanted the process to involve as little time and argument as possible, even going so far as to provision for a lump sum payment to settle their joint bills and offset the loss of his larger income until Vic had an opportunity to adjust to her new circumstances. It all looked great on paper. Didn't it always? And yet here she was now six months after signing the decree, and she still hadn't seen a fucking dime.

She should have expected to lose the house. That was kind of a no-brainer, seeing as it belonged to Newett and their employee who had resided there was off on some Jed Clampett crossed with Quigley Down Under bullshit adventure amidst the pipelines and off-shore rigs of Western Australia. Maybe she had expected it— but so much had happened all at once with Branch and Barlow and Walt leaving her in charge, the time had flown and the mail had piled up and bills were the last thing she was interested in dealing with after a grueling series of sixteen hour shifts.

Before she knew it two months had gone by like two days and Walt was in her kitchen looking sheepish and awkward with her eviction notice in his hand. If she hadn't been so shell-shocked at the time she would have asked him if there were any other papers he needed to deliver while he was at it. Collections notices? Unpaid parking tickets? Lawsuits for use of excessive force? Seemed likely enough considering the type of mood she'd been in.

Instead of dishing out her standard helping of sass Vic had quietly started tossing items into the cardboard boxes Walt provided in a daze, ashamed at how excited she initially was to think he had dropped by for a social visit when that clearly wasn't on his mind whatsoever. How much more pathetic could she possibly get? Walt had helped as much as possible, but he was clearly not comfortable with the intimacy of the task and mainly hovered and paced between the kitchen and the front foyer. They'd spoken to each other only when necessary, and Vic had found herself wondering how and when everything had gone so very, very wrong.

The fact that Walt had gone to his daughter and asked if Vic could stay for a while initially gave her hope that he must at least care on some level. In the end, she wound up thinking maybe he just felt sorry for her. If there was one good thing she could say about the situation, it was that she had discovered that she liked Cady a lot more than she had known or expected. They had developed a tentative friendship, something Vic hadn't even realized she sort of needed at the time, although there were moments where the slightly younger woman would exhibit habits and mannerisms that reminded Vic so much of Walt that it was almost painful to be around her.

A couple weeks ago Vic had finally asked Cady for advice regarding the situation with Sean. She'd done a fair amount of her own research, but had concluded that it was extremely foolhardy to have a lawyer as a roommate and not ask for legal counsel when it was sorely needed. Vic knew she was stubborn to the point of irrationality sometimes. She was trying to be better; there were a lot of ways in which she wanted to be better, and this had seemed like a step in the right direction.

Cady was of the opinion that Vic would be well within her rights to bring suit against her ex-husband, as he was clearly in breach of what was set out in the divorce agreement they had both endorsed. Vic had expressed her concerns that Sean would fight dirty if they ended up in court, and that was where the conversation had turned a bit awkward.

The kitchen was bright and cheerful as the two women ate a light dinner at the small table in the corner of the room, both clearly dressed for a night in with a mostly-full glass of wine beside each of their plates.

"What do you mean? He signed the papers just like you did. In terms of the law he's on very shaky ground to argue against that."

Vic poked half-heartedly at the spinach salad on her plate. "He—" She sighed, putting the fork down and letting her hands drop into her lap. "Sean believes I was unfaithful while we were married. It may not be a valid legal factor but I'm afraid he'll try to make a big deal out of it."

Eyes widening, Cady chewed and swallowed slowly before making any response. "Wow. But you weren't. Were you? Unfaithful, I mean. Not that it's any of my business…"

In Vic's eyes it seemed fair to say she had forfeited her right to privacy when she'd done what she had with Eamonn here in Cady's house, but she kept that particular opinion to herself. "No, never. But I guess I can see why he'd think so." She gave a small shrug.

"But… with who?" Cady and Vic both knew that there wasn't exactly a wide selection of eligible bachelors in Durant. Of course they were talking about adultery here, so maybe that widened the field somewhat in Cady's shrewd estimation.

What the fuck was she supposed to say? 'My husband thought I was boning your dad, Cady.' Yeah, that sounded all sorts of classy. Twisting the cloth napkin in her lap, Vic avoided eye contact. "Umm. Well, you see—" She trailed off, brain irrevocably snagged on sharp mental images of how she and Walt had been, before.

There must have been a flavor to her silence or some brief and broken clue on her face, because Cady winced in what might have been a blend of sympathy and contact embarrassment as she realized exactly what Vic's now-ex-husband had thought.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

That said it all, really.

Cady recovered quickly, insisting that she could help Vic through the process and assuring her that it was highly unlikely that the case would ever reach any type of public forum. Then, the two had turned their attention back to their respective salads, pointedly ignoring the elephant with a badge and cowboy hat that was most assuredly present in the room with them.

Sighing, Vic walked across the deserted office and righted the wastebasket. She bent down, retrieving the one crumpled piece of paper that had spilled onto the hardwood floor. Wandering back to her desk, motion in the street below caught Vic's eye and she peered out the window to see Walt crossing over to where the Bronco was parked under the steel grey sky at the edge of the square. His head was down, what looked like one of Ruby's ubiquitous post-it notes clutched between the fingers of his left hand. Vic felt a mixture of anger and sorrow as she watched him, tears welling in her eyes unwanted and unbidden at the idea that Walt must hold her in such contempt that he couldn't even be bothered to pass through the office to let her know he was going out.

Their relationship had not improved after the 'incident' with Zachary and Dr. Monaghan at Walt's cabin. If anything, the rift between them had worsened. Walt would probably talk about what had happened when hell froze over, not that she would ask. Vic had already humiliated herself once in a poorly-handled attempt to draw him out, and a volatile combination of pride and fear was firmly in place to ensure that the disastrous scene in a litter-strewn alleyway would never be repeated. That moment had been the culmination of weeks filled with mislaid trust, avoidance, bad timing, and a mutual inability or unwillingness to let each other in. The end result was crushing, devastating, painful enough to make Vic doubt absolutely everything that had come before and all but abandon her hopes for the future.

So… why was she still here? She asked it of herself every day, but as with so many other questions in the recent past Vic knew that she was afraid of the answer.

Ruby had left early to pick up one of her grandkids from school and Ferg was out at an increasingly productive speed trap by the casino, so now it looked like she was left alone with the silence and the papers from Sean's lawyer indicating that her fears about the complications of this process were not unfounded. Shoving them back into the manila envelope they'd arrived in, Vic set them aside and returned her attention to the hopefully mind-numbing stack of departmental paperwork strewn across the desk beside her laptop.

She was still struggling through some boring reports that needed to be signed off on when the office door swung open half an hour later. Expecting one of the station's usual occupants, Vic didn't even raise her head until greeted by a delicate but oddly nettlesome throat-clearing noise.

Blonde hair. Shapeless office-casual garments. Pinched, disapproving expression. Shit. Donna Monaghan.

"What do you want?" Vic absently contemplated whether she should have tried for a bit more of a polite tone, but there'd been no love lost between the two of them even before the good doctor had turned out to be a bad doctor and was stripped of her license to practice. Vic didn't have the energy left to pretend.

Donna took a few steps forward, gliding through the swinging half-door and standing just inside the main office. Her features were drawn, dark circles evident beneath her pointedly disinterested eyes. "Is the sheriff here?"

"Nope."

She wasn't in the mood to be forthcoming, not that she had any idea where Walt had gone anyway. Her clipped answer sent her on a brief trip down memory lane, to the Red Pony on that day where Henry commented on her apparent adoption of Walt's speech patterns. The older woman hadn't moved, and Vic noticed for the first time that she was carrying a green folder in her hand.

"Is there something else you need? As you can see I'm the only one here, with plenty of actual police work that needs my attention."

That sweeping statement may have been a bit over the top, but Vic couldn't bring herself to care. Donna nodded and made a face, a bitchy face of the sort that women use on each other when they know that the other one is being a bitch, too.

"I just came to drop this off. It's a more complete statement about… everything. I felt I owed it to Zachary to set things right before he wakes up."

"You mean if he wakes up?" Vic knew it was a low blow, but she resented Donna's implication that Zachary had been the only one affected by her actions.

Donna flinched. "The doctors seem to think he will. Maybe I should just come back some other time."

How about no? No fucking way was Vic going to let her come back and try this wounded martyr act out on Walt. Not a chance. "You can leave it with me." She stood, reaching out in invitation. "What is it with the women in this county and their inability to operate a fax machine, anyway?" That rhetorical question had come screaming out of nowhere, born from the memory of Lizzie Ambrose employing a similar pretense to throw herself into Walt's path. At least with Lizzie what you saw was exactly what you got.

"I don't really feel comfortable with you reading this." They each had a hand on the folder now, with Donna reluctant to release her grip.

Vic shook her head and emitted an unamused huff of laughter. "Well then I guess it's a good thing I don't give enough of a shit about anything you could possibly have to say to bother looking at it."

Maybe it was out of surprise, or perhaps the tone had been sufficiently threatening, but Donna dropped her hand and allowed Vic to take possession of the institutional-looking folder. Her gaze flickered from Vic's face to the item in her hand, looking uncertain.

"I'll leave it on his desk, scout's honor."

"Fine." She turned to go, shooting a look over her shoulder with two more words as a grudging after thought. "Thank you."

No 'You're welcome' was forthcoming, and Vic stood in the middle of the office tapping her foot and chewing the inside of her lip for several long moments after the disgraced psychiatrist took her leave. She hated herself for wanting to open the folder and read every word, was mortified by the impulse to search within and between the lines for non-existent clues about Donna and Walt's relationship or his feelings or a half dozen other topics that Vic wished deep down in the abyss of her existence that she could lie to herself and say she didn't care about.

The folder stayed closed as Vic wandered slowly into Walt's empty and dimly lit office, cast in a lonely bluish hue by the clouded and fading illumination of the cool fall day. Feeling despondent and more isolated than ever she carelessly dropped the folder where she knew he would find it and sank into one of the chairs in front of the desk, the very same one she'd occupied on that fateful evening when Walt had told her he wanted her to stay.

Stay for what? For this? If she had known it was going to be this way… who was she kidding? Even if she had known, she still would have stayed, maybe hoping that things would be different this time around. She'd have stayed a hundred times over, just because he said he wanted her to.

She peered at the clock on the wall, which read 6:12pm. Hopefully Ferg would return soon to cover the night shift, so she could head back to Cady's and wash the literal and metaphorical grime of the shittier-than-usual day off her skin before heading over to the Red Pony. Vic's life might be a wreck and she certainly didn't seem to have many friends in this town, but at least she had one thing left to look forward to— the weekly girl-talk therapy sessions with her unlikely and entirely platonic drinking buddy, Eamonn O'Neill.

Seems like Vic has a lot of thoughts. Will her and Walt ever get a chance to connect again? Will Sean fork over the damn money so that Vic can pay her bills and move out of Cady's house? Will Eamonn order a Piña Colada now that he appears to be Vic's new gal pal? Let me know your theories!