Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or ideas from The Killing. It's all just for fun.
Spoilers: Season 4, episode 4
"Uh, there's a crime scene down at the lake," Harjo had told Linden when she asked what all the techs were doing bustling around the station so late in the day. His words hadn't really had a chance to sink in before her phone rang, and Holder's name came up on her caller ID. Perfect timing, she thinks, and tells him almost in her first breath that Margaret Raine is the owner of the burgundy Corolla that they'd finally located at St. George's. He doesn't react to her news, however, because they have a much bigger problem that anything remotely related to the Stansbury case. He hadn't even heard her, not really.
His next words are almost deafening in her ear. "Reddick's at the lake house. He found the bodies."
Please, let me have heard that wrong, she thinks desperately.
"What?" Linden asks him, suddenly petrified.
"He found Skinner," is all Holder says, but those three words terrify her more than any she can remember hearing, with the possible exception of the words "I love you," which have faded somewhere into her now-distant past along with the few people who've ever said them to her.
She stands frozen in place with fear in the middle of the hallway… because this is it. This is where it all unravels, where their descent begins. She'd thought that things were bad before, but she knows that it will make what they've been through so far look like a cake walk. No matter how she likes to tell herself that they have covered all of their bases, she knows deep down that the odds of them having done so perfectly are next to nothing. After all, she's a homicide detective, for God's sake! The number of people she has seen over the years who thought they'd committed the perfect crime is staggering. Despite, no, because of her relative expertise in this field, she also knows exactly what they're up against. It's going to get very ugly, very soon.
Her teeth are clenched and she's having trouble breathing normally. Scratch that, she's having trouble breathing at all.
"Linden? Are you there?" Holder's words are in her ear again, but now everything has that now-familiar slow-motion underwater sound to it. Just like they did when she had first discovered that Skinner was the Pied Piper. The day that she ended up shooting him. The day that what was left of her already pathetic excuse for a life began falling apart completely. "Linden?" Holder asks again, sounding more concerned each time he said her name. "Linden, you at the station? I'm gonna come pick you up," he tells her. She just nods, not realizing that the gesture wouldn't register through the phone in the haze of shock in which she now finds herself. She flips the phone closed and drops it into her pocket without even thinking about it.
They found the bodies. All of them, Skinner too. Or if they hadn't found the girls yet, they soon would. Her mind works sluggishly but desperately to process the information she had just taken in, as she walks robotically toward the front door of the station. She had wanted the girls' bodies to be found, so badly that it had almost seemed worth it to let them find Skinner, to reveal what they had done. What she had done. But because Holder had been a part of it, and because he is determined to protect his own future even if she doesn't seem to care about hers, she has tried her hardest to come to terms with the fact that the girls' remains would never be recovered. It killed her to accept that, and she may not have been able to swallow that kind of agony for anyone else. But for Holder… she does what she has to do. They've been through so much together. He's the only person in the world that she can call a friend. It might not mean much to other people, but to her, that means everything.
She makes it outside the station and into the cold rain that's falling, following the sidewalk around the corner of the building where she won't be subject to the stares of everyone coming and going through the front door. The sun is setting and the dark is closing in around the city quickly. It seems like a metaphor for how she feels. The dark is closing in around her quickly in her mind, as well. She shudders, feeling sudden panic as she wonders what will happen when the darkness encloses her completely, squeezes too tightly. Her eyes close and she leans back against the side of the building for support. Breathing doesn't seem to be coming naturally at the moment, and she finds herself gulping slightly for air. This can't be happening. It can't.
Holder pulls up to the curb in the patrol car in which they spend so much of their time, but Linden is oblivious. He rolls down the window to talk to her, tell her to come get in the car, but his words don't seem to have any effect on her. Her eyes remain closed and she doesn't give any sign that she hears him. Even from a distance he can see that she is freaking out, and he silently thanks God or Buddha or whoever that she had the sense to come around the corner and not do this by the front door of the station. As it is, though, there are still too many eyes on them for his comfort at the moment. He's pretty freaked out himself, though clearly he's in better shape than Linden.
He gets out of the car slowly, trying not to draw attention to them from anyone who might be passing by. Most of the people who "might be passing by," after all, are cops. They can escape suspicion, at least at this moment, as long as they don't act like anything is wrong. After all, as he knew first hand, cops are trained to be vigilant and observant about situations, even when they aren't expecting trouble.
Walking towards her, he calls out her name nonchalantly. "Yo, Linden." His standard greeting is met with no response, not even a flicker of recognition. Her eyes are still closed. He can see that no external sound is making it to her brain over the noise in her own head. Once again he is grateful that she made it this far outside the station on her own, considering the condition she's now in. This situation would be a hell of a lot harder to deal with while pretending that everything is normal if there were other people around.
He says her name again as he gets closer. There's more concern in his voice now, but still, he gets no reaction. He continues towards her.
Finally he's standing right in front of her, much closer to her than their usual distance of a few feet away. He puts his hands squarely on her shoulders, shaking her slightly. "Linden," he says, slightly louder and more firmly than before. She opens her eyes slowly, looking confused.
"Holder? What…?" her eyes dart around wildly, and he can see the desperate panic in them. This is not going to be good, he thinks grimly. His hands are still on her shoulders, and he looks down into her terrified eyes. It's strange to be so close to her – it has only happened a few times in all the times he's known her – and it's stranger still that she doesn't seem to be struggling to get away from him, as he might have expected her to. Linden has a thing about… personal space, physical contact… all of it, which he has known for a very long time. Right now the fact that she's just standing there, not struggling against him, not seeming to notice that he's squarely inside her personal space, is worrying him more than he would have if she had been trying to break free of his grasp.
He looks at her seriously, trying to make her focus on him. "Linden," he says again, and waits for her to focus on him. "Linden, do you hear me?"
She tries to keep her focus on him, but her thoughts are swirling so fast, it's hard to make sense of anything. She had been having trouble breathing a minute ago, but she seems to be doing better, at least with that, now that she's looking up at Holder. If she can just stay focused on him…
"Linden…?" He says her name again, getting a little worried now. He has never seen her this bad before. He has never seen her anywhere near this bad before, and they've been through some bad shit. He hopes she's gonna be able to come back from the breaking point fast, because this shit she's doing now, this was not going to help them avoid suspicion. Finally, her eyes seem to focus on his, and he sees her face clear slightly, as if she's seeing him there for the first time.
"You okay?" he asks her, still standing in front of her and holding onto her shoulders. He's afraid that if he lets go of her, she might fall to the ground.
She just nods quickly. A lie, of course. She's clearly not anywhere near okay.
"Let's go," Holder says in a voice that leaves no room for argument. He removes his hands from her shoulders and takes a step backwards, watching carefully to see if he's going to have to catch her. She stays where she's standing, propped up against the wall, as he determines that she's at least sturdy enough on her feet to stand. Next, he has to figure out if she's going to be able to walk on her own. "Linden, we gotta go," he tells her seriously. "Now. We have to go to the lake. They expect us to be there. If we don't go, it'll just raise suspicion."
He stops talking to let her digest what he has told her. He's really, really not crazy about the idea of going to the lake either, but he's already weighed their options and there's really no choice. It's true, what he said about it looking suspicious if they stay away. Hell, he's pretty sure that most of the cops from the station will be there once word gets out what happened. As much as it's gonna be uncomfortable as hell, they have to be there, there's just no other option. The problem, of course, is keeping Linden from freaking the fuck out.
"Linden," he says again, seriously, "Let's go." Slowly, she pushes herself away from the wall she'd been leaning on so heavily and walks past him slowly on the sidewalk to their car, parked at the curb. Her sluggish brain has analyzed the information available and come to the same conclusion as Holder: they have no choice but to go to the lake. Doing anything else would look suspicious. She gets in the passenger seat without a word, slumping down in the seat and pulling the door shut behind her. Holder jogs around to the driver's side and gets in, closing the door behind him quickly. He turns to face her, watching her stare out of the front window vacantly.
"Linden." His voice is more insistent than usual, because he isn't sure that she'll acknowledge him otherwise.
"I know," she whispered stubbornly, still staring out through the windshield.
"Linden, look at me," Holder says sternly. His eyes bore holes in the side of her head until finally, slowly, she turn, feeling the weight of his stare. "Are you gonna be okay? I mean… we have to keep our shit together here." They'd been taking turns telling each other that same thing lately, depending on who was losing their shit on that particular day.
"I know," she tells him irritably. "I'm fine."
Holder lets out a short burst of choked laughter. "Linden, you're not fucking fine." As a reward for this outburst, Linden glares daggers at him but says nothing. "What I mean is, if you were fine with all this, well, that would make you a fucking psychopath." She looks at him, her eyes still hard, but beginning to understand better what he's saying.
She closes her eyes and exhales loudly. He watches her sympathetically, knowing that there's no easy way to get through what they have to do. When he speaks again, his voice is gentler, but still deathly serious. "We just gotta show up, try not to think too hard about what we're seeing, and stay alert for anything we need to handle. Most importantly, we need to stay fucking calm, and say as little as possible."
"Piece of cake, right?" she replies sarcastically, looking back at him again out of the corner of her eyes, before turning to face him fully. The spark, the "Linden-ness" is back in her eyes, he notices with relief. He knows her inside out by now, or at least, better than anyone else in the world does, and the side of Linden that he sees most of the time – the "kick your ass first and ask questions later" side of her – that was what he's seeing once again, finally. He doesn't know how long it's going to last, given what they're about to do, but at least it's there now.
"If you say so, boss," he tells her with a nod of his head. And with that, the pair of them take off for the lake, and the shitstorm that that they already know awaits them there.