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

Holder's standing just outside the cabin, staring into the darkness and trying to figure out which way to go, where to look. He needs a clue, something to help him choose one direction over another. It figures that he has to do this in the dark, when it's ten times harder to search for anyone. But he has to find Linden. There's no waiting til morning.

The sound of his phone makes his heart almost leap out of his chest. He quickly realizes what the sound is and tells himself not to be so jumpy… but that's kind of impossible in this situation. It's still not Linden on the phone. It's Reddick again, but this time he has good news. He found Adrian in the cemetery where his mom is buried. Poor kid has had a rough day… a rough life. Holder is relieved that Adrian is safe. Even though he hadn't been his primary concern, it's one less thing to worry about. And Linden will be so relieved, as long as... No, he tells himself, don't think that way.

Reddick has just hung up on the other end and Holder's still standing with the phone to his ear. "Come on, Linden, where are you?" he mutters under his breath. That's when he hears the gunshot. He looks up, startled, swears under his breath and before he even knows what he's doing, he's running in the direction that he thinks the noise came from. That shot could mean a lot of different things, and a lot of them are bad. He has to find out exactly what just happened. Chances are that Linden's nearby, and…

No, don't panic until you know what you're dealing with, Holder, he tells himself.

…

The sound of the gunshot is still ringing in Linden's ears. She's staring straight ahead of her at Skinner, who has fallen to his knees as a result of the bullet hole in his abdomen. She doesn't remember pulling the trigger, but she clearly did. There's no one else here to have done it. All she knows is that he said that he killed Adrian.

Her vision has tunneled in around Skinner, and the blackness of the night around her is only slowly fading back in. As the ringing in her ears recedes, she could swear she can hear another sound, growing louder by the second. It sounds like… a voice? Is someone else there? Oh God, that's not what she needs right now, a witness to what she has done. At first she can't make out the words or the voice, but then suddenly she realizes – it's Holder, and he's calling her name. He found her, like he always does.

In one way she's relieved to see him. In another way, however, she feels dread. He shouldn't have to witness this, be a part of this ugliness. She just shot Skinner, after all. There are going to be serious repercussions for that.

No, on second thought, she wishes that he hadn't found her. It was selfish of her to wish for him to be here in the first place. She doesn't deserve a partner – a friend – who's that good to her. He has enough of his own shit to deal with, he doesn't need any more of hers, especially not this. And now he's here, and it's too late for him not to be here, to be able to say that he had nothing to do with it. She mentally kicks herself. It's one thing to drag yourself down, but quite another to take someone – your only friend , no less – down with you.

None of these thoughts make it past her brain, however, and certainly not to her mouth. She doesn't even turn to look at him, though she knows he's standing close by. She's still pointing the gun at Skinner, unable to look away from him. In a way, she wishes that Holder would take a few steps closer to her and take her gun away. Though she can't bring herself to let go of it voluntarily, she wants nothing more than to not be holding it. She doesn't know what other horrible things she's going to do. She's already shot Skinner once, though she still can't make her mind understand that it was her who did it. At the moment, she's frightened of herself, as though she were a separate person.

Then suddenly Holder's words, not just the sound of his voice, penetrate her brain. "You okay, Linden?" he's asking her. She glances at him quickly, but doesn't respond. Her mind can't work hard enough to help her form words just then, but she hopes that somehow Holder will understand what she needs to tell him. She knows that this is an insane thing to wish for, especially in almost complete darkness where he can barely see her.

"You okay?" he asks again. She just glances up at him again. I'm not injured, but no, I'm not okay, she thinks, hoping that he can hear her somehow. At this point, it doesn't seem like such a stretch to think that he might understand without her saying anything. Their connection has gotten to be very strong.

I wish… she thinks again as he fails to come any closer to her, I wish he would come over here and take this gun away from me. He's probably scared to come any closer, and I guess I can't blame him. I'm showing that I'm a complete psychopath right now. I guess I am like Skinner. I'm just as much of a monster as he is. The thought unnerves her, and she shudders inside, but the turmoil doesn't show on her face.

Though she wants to, still, she just can't bring herself to put the gun down. Then suddenly Holder's voice is in her head again. No, it's not just in her head. He's actually talking to her. What is he saying? She tries to focus harder on his words, all the while watching Skinner as he groans in agony on the ground. Things have gone into slow motion again, like they had at Skinner's house, and she has to wait for them to return to normal speed. She repeats Holder's words in her head until she begins to comprehend them.

"We got him. Adrian – he's alive. Reddick found him. He's with him right now."

Holder's words work their way through the layers of her mind, and she is conscious that she feels a flood of relief greater than anything else she could have hoped to feel. Adrian's safe. He's alive. He's not here, with Skinner, and that bastard will never hurt him again.

I did it. He's safe.

She's still pointing the gun at Skinner, she realizes, and she hears Holder's voice again. "Adrian's alive. He's fine. Just put the gun down."

If only he knew how much I want to put the gun down, she thinks. I want nothing more… but I can't.

Not on her own, not with Skinner looking at her like that. She feels hypnotized by his eyes, and she can't stop staring at them. He wants me to shoot him, she realizes. But that's insane. She knows that she absolutely shouldn't do it, shouldn't give it to what he wants. After all, he's psychotic. He killed all those girls – Bullet included – and felt that it was justified. I can't give him what he wants. What would that make me?

"Linden," Holder says, trying to tear her attention away from Skinner. He just needs her to look at him. "Linden, look at me. He wants you to do this. Put the gun down." Holder's words seem very, very far away, farther every second. She wishes fleetingly, again, that Holder would step forward enough to reach her. She wonders if maybe he would be able to break the spell that she can't shake herself out of, bring her back to reality. It wouldn't be the first time.

Despite all of her attempts to talk herself down, her gun remains pointed at Skinner. Somehow she feels like the things that Skinner has done are her fault. After all, she should've seen it… should've known something, and she should've stopped it. So many of those girls could have been saved if she'd figured it out earlier. This wasn't just a case. The perp was Skinner. She was close enough to him – closer than anyone else – and she should have known.

If she lets him go now, who knows what'll happen? What if he somehow gets out? Disappears into society and does this again? No, she has a responsibility, and she finally knows what she has to do. She has a responsibility to ensure that he's never going to hurt Adrian, or a teenage girl, or anyone else, ever again.

"Put the gun down, Linden." Holder's voice is more insistent now, harder. She lets his words sink into her brain, considers them for a minute. Then again… maybe Holder's right. His voice is strangely soothing, despite its hard edge. She relaxes her arms and reconsiders her next move. The gun is still in her hands, but pointed at the ground in front of her. Maybe I don't have to do this.

She's still staring at Skinner, who's holding her gaze like he has a tractor beam coming from his eyes. "Look at me, Sarah." He's gasping for breath slightly, and it's hard to watch. "Look at me," he whispers. "It's gotta be you. You loved me."

Her face contorts in pain. Her head is swimming. Then again…

"Linden," Holder interjects quickly, knowing that he's about to lose her to Skinner's spell again, that she's dangerously close to doing something she'll regret.

She hears Holder, but his words aren't sinking in anymore, not really. And Skinner is insistent, pleading, staring at her pathetically. "You love me," Skinner pleads. Does she? She wonders – doubts – if she even knows what love feels like. Does it even matter? It doesn't feel like any of it matters.

"It's over," Holder's telling her. Except that he's lost her. He can see that she's not hearing him anymore. He tries desperately to think of what to say, what to do, to get through to her.

Skinner is right in front of her, and he's all she can see or hear. "Look at me," he says, and his eyes are pleading along with his words.

Holder's right, Skinner wants me to shoot him. Just more proof of how sick he is, she thinks, wondering how someone's mind could even work the way Skinner's does.

Then suddenly a realization hits her hard. Holder won't understand. As the reality of the thought hits her, she immediately feels like she's falling into nothingness. She knows that this is it. This is where she fucks up so badly that her only friend is going to leave her behind as well, just like everyone else has, beginning with her mother and all the way up to the present day. This is where she proves that it doesn't matter what she does, how hard she tries, because everyone leaves eventually. She knows that there's no way Holder will stand behind her after this, because she knows that what she's about to do is unforgiveable. The pain over that thought alone threatens to tear her insides in two.

I do it to myself, she thinks. How did I get so good at fucking up my life so completely?

And yet, even though she knows exactly what she's doing and what the consequences will be, she's going to do it anyway. Is it for Skinner, or is it for all the girls he killed? Or is it for herself? She can't let Skinner get away with what he's done. And she knows that it's not her job to dole out vigilante justice – quite the opposite, actually – but there's no turning back now. She has to see this through, for every one of Skinner's victims. For Bullet… and by extension, for Holder. Even though it's going to make him hate her. She wants to cry, to scream, but none of it would do any good. None of it matters.

As if on autopilot her arms go back up, the gun aiming at Skinner once again. Holder sees it happen in slow motion, and wants to do something to stop her, but before he can even utter another word, she squeezes the trigger and shoots Skinner again, this time straight through the heart.

"NO!" Holder screams. He's in a panic. What has she done? What has she fucking done? He can barely breathe. Looking at her in disbelief as Skinner's body falls to the ground with a thud, he can't read the look on her face. She stand completely still and continues to stare down at Skinner. His mind can't process much of anything. The shot is still echoing through his head, louder and more intense than any gunshot he's ever heard before. He can't believe that Linden just did that. The only sound around them now is the insects chirping, and the silence is just as deafening as the gunshot had been only seconds before.

She looks up, out into the distance, her expression unreadable. Holder walks a few steps in the other direction from her, laces his fingers behind his head. The only word that can move from his brain to his mouth is the one he repeats, over and over. "No. No… no… no."

In his mind, he's slightly more coherent. He's aware that they're going to have to do something, and fast. Make some sort of plan. No matter that he has just watched her shoot Skinner, there's no way he's turning her in. Quite the opposite. She's his partner, more than his partner, she's his best friend, and there's no way he's letting her go down for this, not alone.

She's fucked up, but she's not the murderer. No, she shouldn't have killed Skinner. He wishes to God that he could have stopped her, that he'd done something more to stop her. Should he have taken the gun away from her? He doesn't think she would have shot him if he'd tried… but then again, who really knew? He wouldn't have thought she'd have shot Skinner, either.

He wishes that he'd tried to take the gun from her, and curses himself silently for not doing enough. He hadn't saved her… not from Skinner, and not from herself.

No, he thinks, she's not going down for this. Not if he can help it. He only hopes that he can help it. Help her.

He's always felt protective of her, and that urge is stronger now than ever before, which strikes him as pretty fucked up. She did just kill someone. Not someone. A cop. Their boss. Yes, Skinner had been a psychopath… but they were the police. They didn't get to kill the bad guys, they were supposed to arrest them. His head is pounding and he needs a cigarette, but he doesn't want to stop to find one. No, they have more immediate things to worry about.

He imagines that she expects him to leave. He tries not to be offended by it, knows that it's just how her mind works. She's always waiting for people to leave her, because so many of them have. All of them, really. He's the only one that's still there. He doesn't think that she's said in so many words that that's what she thinks, but he just knows. And as time has gone on, it has made him more and more determined to stay. To not be just another person who leaves. He was never so great at being the dependable guy in his past, but there's something about their friendship, something about being needed... he thinks he needs it almost as much as she does.

Still, he knows that they've just crossed over to a very fucked up place together, one that he doesn't know how to navigate. If he can just stop and fucking think. He has to calm down.

Linden's still staring into the darkness. He watches her back from a few feet away as he moves restlessly back and forth, trying to quiet his racing thoughts enough to think about what they need to do now, this second. It's obvious to him that he's going to have to be the one to come up with the plan. He'll be lucky if he can just get her to go along with his plan, whatever it is. It's not entirely clear how out of it she is right now, how much she's lost touch with the world around her. The fact that she's standing there, staring straight ahead and not moving is his first clue.

She's staring into the trees. The trees, she thinks, focusing on a cluster of them somewhere in front of her. That picture of the trees. That Adrian drew. She sees random flashes of pictures from the Seward case file, from the initial investigation with Skinner, flash before her eyes almost all at once, mixed together with the new investigation with Holder. She sees the picture of the trees again, blazing on her hotel refrigerator as if bathed in spotlights, remembered the terror of that night she found it there. The trees. "The trees," she whispers breathlessly. Holder looks at her, waiting to see if she would say more. She doesn't.

Then she's at Holder's apartment, staring out into the darkness in the street outside, and feeling so afraid of whatever was out there. A few seconds later, she's standing in the forest, Skinner slumped over in front of her. Then without warning she's in Holder's apartment, drinking a glass of water, except that it's water from the lake where he put all those girls after he killed them. Next, she's standing at the edge of that lake, looking at the floating blobs of red that she can't help but think would look so pretty, had they been flowers or something other than dead girls. She's not sure which one of these scenes is real.

There's a buzzing sound in her ears, and then she's sitting in the car with Holder. She relaxes slightly, just for a second, only to watch in disbelief and fear as his face morphs into Skinner. She doesn't understand what's happening before her eyes, and all she knows is that she's afraid. Finally she can't take it anymore, and after wanting to do so for what feels like days, she shuts her eyes against all of it and sinks to the ground on her hands and knees, letting her forehead rest against the dirt and leaves. It feels cool and relaxing. She shouldn't like it… but she does.

She's losing her mind, she's sure of it now. What little of it that had been left. She's finally going crazy. She's going to end up back in that hospital again, and this time no one's going to get her out. No one's going to be there at all, just her all alone. They're going to pump her full of meds until she can't think straight, then they're going to come and take her from the hospital to jail. After all, she's done horrible things, and she deserves it. She deserves the darkness that's pummeling her from every side. It's seeping inside of her. Soon she'll be gone.

The racing thoughts are just too much, and Linden feels herself falling through the abyss in her mind. She doesn't care. None of it matters. It's over. All of it. The nightmare of Skinner, and the few shreds of good that had been left in her life. It's all over.

Somehow I deserved this, she thinks again. She knows it. She doesn't know what she did to deserve this life, but that's just how it has always been. She starts to cry as she feels the darkness swallow her, and then... nothing.