Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or ideas from The Killing. It's all just for fun.

Spoilers: Season 3, episode 10

Author's Note: I hate that it has taken me this long to update this story! My summer has been insane. I believe I've said before that I have no intention of abandoning this story before I reach the end of the show's story line, and I'm holding to that. I love these characters. I want to get them to the happy ending they deserve. First, of course, there's LOTS more drama to come! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

Linden and Holder are in the woods that Linden had identified on the map back at the car as being the ones closest to the Sewards' former apartment. They've been walking for a while, looking for a sign of the tree house that Ray Seward said that he'd built for Adrian. Holder's not seeing the point of wandering through the woods quite this far away from their crime scene. What the hell are we doing out here? he wonders. There must be a better use of our time.

But Linden is sure, and he knows better than to argue with her when she's made up her mind. Better to let her check out her theory. After all, it's uncanny how often she's right. Still, the farther they walk from the crime scene without finding anything, the more he's beginning to resemble a whining kid.

Linden continues walking briskly and silently ahead of him, caught up in her own thoughts. There's something for us to find out here. She just knows it. Holder lags behind reluctantly, hoping that she'll change her mind and turn back. Surely they're not going to find anything this far out.

"Hey, how much longer we gotta be out here?" Holder protests. "Anyway, it's over a mile from here to the kid's apartment."

Linden is just as intense as ever, if not more so, and she doesn't slow down at all. If anything, she walks faster as she answers Holder, only giving him half a backward glance, and only once. She talks fast too, as if that will help them find what they're looking for sooner.

"Trisha and Ray used to fight all the time. There were dozens of domestic abuse calls. Adrian slept in a closet. He was lonely, scared," she reminds him, even though it wasn't really an answer to the question that Holder had asked.

"Still, a mile is a long way for a little kid," Holder protests, doubting that a kid would have fled so far into the woods on his own in the middle of the night at that age.

A mile isn't that far when you're desperate to get away, Linden thinks to herself.

It's not his fault, she has to remind herself, he just doesn't understand. I'm going to have to explain it to him. But how? How can I put that feeling into words?

Linden turns around and stops suddenly, facing him. Her usual slower, more measured tone has been replaced by words that are coming out at almost rapid-fire pace. She's not angry, and her voice isn't any louder than usual, but there's an urgency that's not usually there. She needs Holder to understand that she knows what she's talking about.

"In my first foster home, the lady used to cry all day long, every day. I'd wait until I couldn't stand it anymore, until I thought that I was gonna explode if I stayed another minute, and then I'd run. Every couple days I'd run. And they would find me, and they would bring me back, and then I would run again."

She has just broken her self-imposed rule of not talking about her past, of not making herself vulnerable to anyone. There's no way she would've done it for anyone else, but even though she never wanted to, she has grown to trust Holder.

Holder, who is still lagging behind when Linden turns around, continues walking slowly forward as she speaks, and stops a few feet away. He watches her carefully, knowing that this confession isn't easy for her. It explains a lot about the Linden he knows in the present, why she's always so quick to push everyone away. It had started a long time ago.

They stand and look at each other for a few seconds as Holder digests what she'd told him and what it means for their current case.

It's as though she's answering the question that he'd asked her – it feels like a long time ago now – outside the prison. "This is like a pattern with you, you know that? You always leavin', runnin'. You never stay… What the hell happened to you, Linden? Why you always takin' off?" He'd been drinking at the time, or he probably wouldn't have asked her directly. In any case, now he has at least a little bit of the answer to that question.

She's always been a runner, he thinks. Pushin' people away's just more of that same thing. Somethin' she does 'cause physically runnin' away ain't always possible when you're an adult.

It suddenly all makes complete sense, but it also makes him sad. The two of them had had a rocky start, but these days they're good. No, they're more than good. They just seem to "get" each other. They've been through more than one crisis together. She's leaned on him, and he's leaned on her, and neither of them have backed away. Well, not permanently anyway. Somehow they keep each other in check, and there's the unspoken knowledge that they have each other's backs. He's even said so out loud when he thought she needed to hear it. It's a concept completely foreign to Linden… friendship. Holder jokes about them being "BFFs," but really, it's the truth.

And because they're such good friends, he hates to think about her feeling that desperate, now or in the past. He hates that there's really nothing he can do about it.

For a split second, he imagines her as a tough but scared little kid with a long, red ponytail, trying to hold everyone around her at arm's length, the same way she still does as an adult. What he sees in his mind is basically a mini version of the Linden her knows. It's bad enough that she'd ended up so damaged as an adult, but to imagine her that way as a kid, as well… It makes him feel even more protective of her than he already had. He hadn't really realized it until now, that that was how he felt. How had that been allowed to happen to her at such a young age? Sure, everyone has their baggage, but hers seems like an unfairly heavy burden just then.

He doesn't dare show any sign of these thoughts, of course, knowing how easily she's usually spooked by displays of emotion of any kind. He just watches her to see what comes next.

"Adrian's a runner, too," she says finally.

Of course, he thinks. She can see it in him, because they're so much alike.

Linden turns around without another word and continues walking briskly along the path through the trees. Holder, who isn't used to Linden voluntarily sharing personal information, is still processing what he's heard. He follows her lead silently, still imagining Linden as a kid. It all makes sense, both what she'd said about herself, and the fact that she could read Adrian so well.

They walk a little further through the trees and emerge to find boards that form a ladder, nailed directly into the truck of a tree, leading up to a hand-made treehouse. Adrian's treehouse.

By now, Holder isn't surprised. Linden's intuition when it comes to her job is pretty astounding.

Holder

She's never talked much about her past, and I guess by now I just assumed that she probably wouldn't. Not anytime soon anyway. From what little she's said before, it kinda seemed like there's no happy memories there. I get why she wouldn't want to live in the past if the past was shit. Mine ain't all that great. But Linden's childhood makes mine look easy, and that's sayin' somethin'. Makes me wanna go back to that time and do something to fix it for her.

Not that I can do that, and not that I woulda been able to fix it if I'd been there. More like I'd fuck it up even more for her… My luck's never been much better than hers. Still… I just wish she didn't feel like she had to carry it all around with her all alone. I mean, the fact that she told me as much as she has is pretty amazing, knowing her as well as I do.

I know it's corny and a little weird, but sometimes, like now, I get the urge to hug her. She just seems like someone who needs a hug. She needs to let someone care about her, she just doesn't realize it. Of course, I don't actually hug her. I know better, because I'm pretty sure she'd beat the hell out of me if I tried.

Crazy thing is, all the fucked up things in her life seem to have made her crazy good at this fucked up job of ours. I consider myself a hard worker, I guess, but Linden makes me look like a slacker. She gives it everything she has. She gives too much, and it takes its toll on her. I know that she knows it, but it's like she can't stop it. There ain't no separation between work and the rest of her life, and when things don't work out – like her last second attempts to save Ray Seward's life – she's completely devastated. No wonder she walked away after the Rosie Larsen case. The problem is that she loves it, which was why she came back.

Well, that and she missed me terribly. Clearly, because who could resist what I got goin' on?

Nah, even though she tried, she can't separate herself from the job. It just kinda takes over her. She pushes away all the living people around her, but the cases – the dead people – she needs them. Maybe 'cause they can't reject her.

Linden

A mile isn't that far when you're desperate to get away. Does he really not get that?

No, of course he doesn't. Why would he? Holder's been through his fair share of shit, but this… this is my issue, not his. I've never really talked much about my past, so how would he know? I guess it's hard for me to remember that.

And I want to say that I've tried to get him to understand, but honestly, I don't try that hard. I mostly shut him out the same way I do to everyone else… Maybe I've gotten a little better, but I'm still not great at communicating with him. I like to think I'm not as bad as I was at back when we first started, but who knows? It's not that I don't trust him, because I do… logically, at least. I know that he's there for me. He's the only one who is. He has actually come out and said it to me. I know that he's a decent guy, maybe the most decent one I've ever met… and yet, I don't know. I just… can't. I don't know why.

I suck at communication, and I know it. Lucky for me, half the time I don't have to explain things to him. Not as much as I should have to anyway. Holder has this eerie, and frankly very irritating, habit of being able to read me. I guess sometimes I like it, but other times I hate it. But the alternative to him being able to read me isn't better, apparently, because I also hate having to stop and explain how I know something, when I just know. This is one of those times.

When I was Adrian's age I would have easily run that far, even in the dark, if I were him. It didn't fully occur to me that that wasn't normal until Holder seemed so shocked. I mean, I guess most kids would be scared to be out in the woods alone at night because they're scared of the dark, or bugs, or the boogeyman, or wild animals, or all of those things, or something else altogether. I guess most kids are more afraid of what's waiting for them outside than what's happening around them inside – inside their house, or inside their heads… but I wasn't one of them, and Adrian's not either.

It's not Holder's fault, he just doesn't understand. I guess I'm just going to have to keep explaining it to him. I'm going to try, anyway.

…

Holder had called in to the station as soon as Tess Clarke, Adrian's foster mother, had found the back door of the house wide open. She'd been angry to find them at her front door looking for Adrian when she'd arrived home, and skeptical of what they'd been telling her – that they needed to find her son immediately. However, Adrian's backpack was in the house, but the boy himself was nowhere to be found. And then the back door was found wide open, and things began to look serious. Linden had a sinking feeling that something bad had happened to Adrian.

Backup arrived a short time later, and the unis had started checking through the house for any other clues, any signs of foul play, anything that could help them find Adrian. One of the unis sat down to ask Tess some questions, while Linden and Holder slipped outside to wait for Skinner.

Linden was pacing on the front porch, and the noise from her deliberate footsteps echoed loudly in the afternoon stillness of the neighborhood. Holder watched her from where he was leaning against the side of the house for a few minutes before he decided that maybe they should wait by the street. Tess and Linden didn't exactly have a friendly history, and both of them were pretty worked up at the moment. The noise that Linden was unconsciously making might not help. Calming Linden down in this situation would be a lost cause and he knew it, but he had a shot of getting her to at least get a little further from the house.

"Linden," Holder said loudly, trying to pull her out of her thoughts. She stopped pacing and looked up quickly, seeming confused, as he motioned with his head to the front walkway. Pushing himself off the side of the house, he started walking calmly up the walkway, towards the street. For once, Linden didn't ask questions, she just followed him. He tried to project calm, hoping that it would rub off on her.

At the street, the presence of the squad cars were drawing some attention from passersby. Linden couldn't pace in the street, so she stood on the curb and fidgeted with whatever was in the depths of her pockets, bouncing slightly. Holder stood on the curb a few feet away, watching her.

"Skinner'll be here any minute," he said, glancing down the street to check for his arrival. Not that he was sure what good that would do. He couldn't decide if their boss' presence would calm Linden down or not, considering their… well, whatever it was that was going on with them. Then again, he thought, I doubt anyone could calm Linden down right now.

"Yeah," Linden replied absently. Holder couldn't tell if she'd even really heard what he'd said.

"He's gonna be ok, Linden," he said, referring to Adrian. Of course, Holder had no way of knowing that, and they both knew it. Still, he felt like he needed to say it, though he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince: her, himself, or maybe both of them. "He ain't no little kid no more. Not like he was when his mom died. He's smart, a fighter. Maybe… maybe he saw something that spooked him, and he just ran."

Linden looked up at him as if she was giving the idea serious consideration.

"You said he's a runner, so…" Holder trailed off, unsure of how plausible it was. Would the kid have left the door wide open? Surely he was old enough to have been taught not to do that. He's not four years old. You'd think that the only way an older kid would do something like that was if he was in real danger…

She nodded her head slowly, and suddenly he could see the wheels in her head turning. He hoped she wasn't going to do that thing she sometimes did where she seemed to read his thoughts. It would just worry her more.

"…maybe he just got spooked and ran…" she said quietly, finishing his sentence. She tilted her head slightly as she paused to consider it. It's possible, she thought, and felt the tension in her lessen just a tiny bit.

Holder shrugged and exhaled heavily. "Ain't like he's never done it before."

Holder has no more of an idea about whether Adrian's okay than I do, she thought, suddenly annoyed. If anything, he has less of an idea than I do, because I understand Adrian better than he does.

Suddenly, the other voice in her head piped up. It was the one that gave people the benefit of the doubt, and the one she didn't listen to often. Maybe so, but you don't know that something's happened to the kid. Holder knows you're worried, and he's just trying to reassure you.

"Yeah," she replied again, and gave him a very slight smile. If nothing else, she appreciated that he was trying to reassure her.

The smile faded almost as quickly as it had come, but it hadn't escaped Holder's attention. Getting a smile from Linden most days was tough, though maybe not as tough as it had been back when they'd first met. Still, it was an accomplishment.

After that, Linden seemed to go back into her own little world. Holder continued to watch her, but said nothing. What could he say?

Headlights in the street and the rumble of a car engine signaled Skinner's arrival, and they stepped towards the car as soon as it stopped. They would brief Skinner, then they'd get to work figuring this thing out.

Adrian had to be OK. Holder was worried about the kid, of course, but besides that, he hated to think about what it would do to Linden if he something happened to Adrian. They would find him. He just hoped that they would find him in time.