It was already 86 degrees and it was only 10 AM. The humid August air in New York felt almost ten degrees warmer than that. Beth's clothes were still stuck to her skin as she opened the plain heavy wooden door that displayed only a simple brass sign beside it and walked in.

"Ms. Kane, Doctor Burke will be right with you," Monika said as she looked up from her computer monitor.

"Thank you."

He noticed the change, of course he did; he'd be a pretty shitty therapist if he hadn't. He'd finally mentioned it during their last visit, but Beth was almost certain that he noticed it the time before that - her first appointment with him after Aric had put her back together. That was still how she thought of it. She would always think of it that way. Not a joint venture, or a shared victory; no matter how often he reminded her that they had been equal partners. Aric was the one who put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

"I love you," she said to him simply afterwards, once he'd woken up. She'd opened her eyes first, still surprised to see him there next to her on her bed. She stayed quiet and still; just watching him while he slept, his beautiful face relaxed, his breathing soft and rhythmic. The room was dark, but she could still see the perfection of his skin as it captured the light coming through the closed blinds. The rest of him was just as perfect. His body could have been chiseled out of marble, each detail and proportion thought over and discussed by the artist beforehand; and she wondered if such a level of perfection could ever be natural, of if he had used, and continued to use, his ability, or gift, or whatever he called it, to achieve such precision. Or was it simply a result of his connection with the universe? Something that he never had to think about? Not a sign of selfishness or conceit, but a product of living in harmony with, and manipulating, whatever it was that powered all creation?

It had taken a bit out of him; she hadn't realized beforehand that it would. She knew he tapped into unlimited dark energy, so she never imagined that it would be his own energy reserves that he would use to fix her, and he had looked tired afterwards. He had been right (of course), she felt like she'd run a 10 k when he had...when they had finished, and she was glad that she was in her own room, on her own bed, and didn't have to move an inch. She drifted off to sleep quickly, her head filled with the feelings and images that she had plucked from his mind while they had been connected.

It had taken her almost two years to even begin to open up to Dr. Burke. It took less than an hour for Aric to know her completely and utterly.

"That's transference," he replied softly, their faces only twelve inches apart, his gray eyes looking into her green ones, "it's a perfectly natural reaction."

Neither one of them had changed clothes, and there was fine sand on the bedspread underneath them, in their hair, and on their skin; an abrasive reminder of the night before, but she didn't care.

"God, you sound just like my shrink," she laughed as they lay on her bed and continued to look at each other.

"He sounds like he knows a thing or two. He'd probably tell you that you shouldn't make any big changes or decisions for a couple of weeks. Give yourself time to adjust."

She was quiet for a minute before she spoke to the man who had erected walls, just as she had, to keep the world at bay. She had seen them, as she wandered the labyrinth of his mind, almost as if they were physical things; shimmering, deep violet barriers that she couldn't see past, or move past, defining the areas of his mind that she was allowed to explore. It was another thing they had in common, like the loneliness they both felt - that before now she'd thought would be a permanent companion for the rest of her life because no one would choose to stay with her if they ever got to know her. She had recognized it immediately when she'd felt it in him, the same insatiable hunger that she felt.

How can someone so beautiful be so lonely? she had asked him. She couldn't remember if it had been the first thing she had said to him in that ethereal space, or whether they had been in his mind, or in hers, or a combination of the two.

I was going to ask you the same question, he replied, which made her cry.

"I love you," she said again, but in preparation for what was coming next, "because you looked inside me, all the way inside, into every nook and cranny, you saw the whole of me, everything I've done, all the blood on my hands, and you didn't run away. You stayed. You saw all of that, and you fixed me anyway. It's not just transference."

And I saw the real you, your hopes, your fears, all the love, and the pain, you keep to yourself. I felt what you felt when you looked into me, I felt your love, your warm embrace when you pulled me closer, in that pale space that's not here, and not there, and told me it was going to be alright.

"You saw into me too, at least part of the way," he said, as if he was still hearing her thoughts, which wasn't out of the realm of possibility, "it's the nature of the connection. It's a very intimate experience, and a scary one; you had to open yourself up completely. Not everyone has that strength, and courage, to do what you did. I'm so proud of you. You should be proud of yourself. But you're still pretty open, all of your defenses are still down, and you have to be careful about doing something that you might regret later."

They lay still for several breaths before she reached for him.

"So, you and me, getting together...not gonna happen?" she asked as her fingers gently stroked the back of his hand.

His hand came up to caress her cheek while he gave her that smile that got her motor running.

God I want him so bad.

"What would your shrink say?" he asked softly.

For some reason Beth's mind formed an answer that she hadn't expected.

"He'd say, let me clear a space on my desk."

They put their heads closer together as they laughed. It wasn't as good as sex, but as consolation prizes went it was still pretty good.

There was a soft knock on her door, and an equally soft woman's voice, that sounded like she had her head a millimeter from the door when she spoke.

"I'm making coffee, if anybody wants some," Julia said, sounding embarrassed at interrupting.

For some reason that just made them laugh harder.

Beth was still smiling at the memory of that morning when the door to the inner sanctum opened, and the tall man in the brown loafers appeared and smiled at her.

"Beth, please come in."

"Good morning, John," Rita said as she stopped at his desk and collected her messages.

"Good morning, Captain," he replied with a smile.

Rita looked at the handful of message slips.

Christ

"Four messages already? How long have you been here?"

"About ten minutes."

She shook her head as she looked at the top slip of paper, and the familiar phone number.

"It's going to be one of those days."

"It already is one of those days," Joe Slovak said as he and his partner walked into the squad room. Ray was putting their radio back in the charging station as Joe filled his boss in. Each of them had taken off their jackets, the sweat stains on their shirts on prominent display.

"Five guys, two stolen Porsches, and probably enough parts to make up four more. Some of the guys are banged up enough they're getting head CTs."

"No weapons?" Rita asked. A lot of the recent incidents had involved guns, or drugs, or cash, or a combination thereof.

"Couple of handguns, nothing big. No one was carrying. The guns were in drawers or tool boxes. No cash to speak of."

"None of the last three, or was it four, incidents had any cash to speak of. Skel's are growing a brain, and keeping their cash and their goods separate," Rita said.

"Or whoever is taking them down is also ripping them off," Joe said as he tried to mentally count backwards.

"That would be a change at least," Ray said, "not the same old dull routine. I really hate sitting in a room all day counting cash."

"That's officially a record, isn't it?" Rita asked as she looked at each man in turn.

"Yup. That's the new record for a calendar month," Ray answered, "with a week to spare."

"Someone's got a bug up their ass," Joe suggested.

"Or someone has more free time than they did last month," Rita said as she walked to her office.

Maybe more than one someone, she thought as her mind pulled up the image of two costumed figures standing on a roof on Lafayette St.

Rita looked at the framed photo on her desk as she dialed the number from memory.

"Captain Ortiz for the Commissioner," she said to the man who answered her call.

"Rita, I hear we have a new record," Commissioner Sewell said.

"Yes ma'am, with a week to spare."

"They're finally going to release the warehouse. The cordon's coming down this afternoon. Less of a traffic nightmare for you to deal with."

"That's good news. Shannon's people will be very happy to hear that. Still no word on who's behind it?"

Rita could hear Keechant Sewell take a slurp of something before she replied.

"No. The Feds are putting a task force together. You might need to send someone to that. I'll get back to you on it later."

Goddammit.

"No way we can get out of that?"

"Like I said, I'll get back to you. That's not why I called you, though. The Sokolova woman is being arraigned today. Word is she's pleading guilty but insane. The judge will order a competency hearing. We'll see where it goes."

Rita's heart rate spiked at the mere mention of the woman's name. They had done the best they could, and Rita thought they did pretty fucking well indeed. But you never know with judges or juries.

"They'll let me know if they need me to testify, I guess. I'll have to go over all the fives."

"They have her confession. They have your statement. They have the footage of the transfer; but, as per fucking usual, when the alphabet agencies are involved there are gaps, and nobody's admitting that they were involved."

because nobody was involved, Rita thought.

"Connie's husband worked a case in the 80s when the KGB and the FBI smuggled an investigator from Moscow into New York to help catch a guy who murdered three people in Russia, one of them an American. Nobody knew he was here; not in Washington, not in Moscow. They smuggled him in, he ended up killing the murderer in self defense on Staten Island, and then they smuggled him out again afterwards. Everything was covered up. I guess some things never change."

"Well some things are going to change. That's the last thing I wanted to talk about. Stop by my office later, we'll see what we can find that's a good fit for you."

"A squad's a good fit for me," Rita said reflexively, her mind and her mouth on autopilot.

There was silence from the other end of the phone, and it went on long enough that Rita began to worry that her mouth had gotten her into trouble again.

"How would you feel about command of a borough?"

Now the silence was on Rita's side of the phone. She stared at the picture of her, Aric, and Tyler as her mind replayed what she had just heard. If one of the images in the picture had started to talk to her in that moment she would be less surprised than she was by the question she was just asked.

holy fucking shit.

"A borough?"

"Detective Borough Commander for Manhattan South. Is that something you'd be interested in?" the Commissioner asked innocently.

Rita realized after a few seconds that she wasn't breathing. She would not have been too surprised to learn that at that exact moment Keechant Sewell was smiling at her assistant and resisting the urge to laugh out loud.

"That is definitely something I would be interested in," Rita answered, still not believing what she was hearing.

"Stop by later today, we'll set it up."

Rita was still standing at her desk several minutes later. She didn't remember saying goodby, or handing up, or whether they arranged a specific time. It seemed that all of her mental capacity was being taken up by one thing.

Detective Borough Commander for Manhattan South.

"Beth gave me the idea. She said she used to do it all the time. What are they gonna do, call the police and say someone beat the shit out of me, duct taped me to a pole, and stole my ill gotten gains?"

"Beth used to rip off the people she worked for?" Jessica asked.

"No. Well...yes. At the end. If she was working for a real scumbag. Before that, she just ripped off lower level assholes she was sent after. Dead men don't need money, she said."

"Dead men?" Jessica asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"She didn't duct tape people to poles and send an anonymous message to the police," Trish explained as she continued to count one-hundred dollar bills and arrange them into piles, "she worked for some dark people, and she had some dark years. And even then, going through all of that, she still had a better retirement plan than I have right now."

"I'm not criticizing; you want to make those assholes pay you for your time and effort sending them away, more power to you. I just...I knew she had it bad before, I just didn't know how bad."

"It was pretty fucking bad. But she's doing better now. She seems happy. Almost serene."

"So you think she's banging Rita's ex?" Jessica asked casually, "that would certainly put a smile on her face."

"What? No! I think he did his thing on her."

"Did his thing on her, or put his thing in her?" Jess asked with a lecherous smile.

"Jesus, what a fucking perv you are today," Trish said as she continued to count bills while she laughed.

It was the third time she had exacted payment, literal payment, from the scum of the city she had targeted for relocation to Riker's. Trish didn't think she would keep it up forever, just long enough that she didn't have to rely on the whims of Kyle Richmond to keep a roof over her head.

"You know you can't just go to the bank and deposit all of that, right?"

Trish stopped for a sip of Chai Latte before continuing.

"Really? Wow, I'm glad I have you here to warn me. That MBA of yours is really coming in handy."

"Bitch. What are you going to do?"

"Beth gave me the name of a guy. And the name of a bank in the Cayman Islands."

Jessica looked at her and just raised her eyebrows.

"What? Just a little harmless money laundering. Something you might want to think about next time you're in a building with four unconscious drug dealers and three million in cash. Neither one of us is getting any younger."

Jessica was about to answer before she closed her mouth and thought about it.

"Now that you mention it, that money's doing nobody any good just sitting in an evidence locker, is it?"

"So you think it worked?" Kate asked her, "Alice is gone for good."

Julia stopped typing and gave her cell phone the attention it deserved.

"It's not like that, you know that better than anybody. They were two halves of a whole, not two separate wholes. He just put the pieces back the way they should have always been."

"And you trust him?" Bruce's voice asked. He was sitting farther away from her dad's phone, and he thought he had to yell to compensate. He had personally developed some amazing technology, but he still could not learn to use a cell phone.

"I trust him," she answered immediately, "I trust him because I've met him, and because I've seen how he is with Rita, and how she looks at him, and talks about him. And I trust him because I saw him with Beth, before and after, and because I can't remember a time when she's been this happy, and free of guilt."

"Do I have to be the one to say how dangerous someone that powerful could be if he goes bad?" Alfred Pennyworth asked.

"I think we know a few people that we can put in that category," Kate said, "If he's fixed Beth, and she's happy, I'll kiss him on the mouth out of gratitude if I meet him."

"If you meet him you won't stop there," Julia said with a smile, "trust me."

"Really?" Kate asked. Julia knew she wasn't interested in men, so for her to suggest that said a lot about the man in question.

Julia was nodding her head even before she replied.

"Really."

A moment of awkward silence preceded Kate's question.

"Got a picture you can send me?"

"You're looking for 47 East 2nd Street," Julia said into Beth and Trish's ears, "for those of you who prefer higher elevations, the building next door is apartments, and will give you roof access. There's the North Anglia International School across the street if you want an observation point."

"We see it," Beth said as the two women walked casually down 2nd Street, "there's a steel door, with a sign that says hollow sidewalk, and a metal door in the sidewalk nearby."

"That might be where they load and unload," Julia said as she looked at the image from Beth's lenses and checked it against the blueprints for the building that were on record with the city, and currently displayed on her computer monitor.

They turned the corner onto 2nd Avenue and walked north. The building was wider than it was deep, the wall that was now on their left not even half as long as the front of the building. At the back of the building was an alley with a metal roll up gate that had No Parking spray painted in the center.

"Could be worth a look," Trish said as she looked at the corrugated metal gate before tilting her head up to look at the intersection of building and sky, "once we're on the roof. People never think to look up."

"It's an apex predator thing," Beth said as they continued to walk north. They had everything they needed for the time being. Julia could put a composite together from the lens footage she had recorded. The building was too small to make "Through The Wall Imaging" worthwhile, and from what they saw it looked like most of the action was going to be below ground, "people never realize that they're not always the predator. When they find out that they're the prey it's usually too late."

"True," Trish said. They were passing a Hare Krishna Temple, which was right next to an art gallery. Across the street was a fried chicken restaurant with a red awning. It looked nothing like Luke's bar, but the awning reminded Beth of the first time she had seen Jessica in action. When Trish spoke, Beth thought for a second that she had read her mind. Then she realized that her stomach was sending out an audible SOS.

It had been almost a month since she woke up to a new reality, and ever since that morning she had counted the days.

"Don't see me for a month," Aric had said after she had tried again to convince him that it wasn't just transference that she felt, "if you still feel this way in a month's time, we'll talk."

"Can't you just make a shortcut, so we don't have to wait?" she had asked as they each held one side of the bed spread and shook it free of sand.

"Even if I could, that would be cheating," he had answered before their hands met at the center of the bed as they smoothed out the wrinkles. He smiled again, and it took all her willpower not to lean forward the rest of the way and press her lips against his.

"Fine," she whispered, their heads close enough together that he had no problem hearing her, "lunch, one month from today. You pick the location."

"It's a date," he said simply.

But it was a date that would have to wait, because two black holes that were a billion fucking light years away had collided and were now sending out gravitational waves fifty times more powerful than the energy of all the stars in the universe put together.

"It sounds bad, but by the time they get to us they'll just generate some spacetime ripples. Nothing to worry about. But it's going to peak next week. It's bad enough right now that shortcuts will be tricky," he'd explained when he'd called her.

"So you're stuck where you are now?" She asked as her heart sank, her fear that he would find a way to back out coming true.

"Paolo, ¿puedes vigilar a Tyler el martes?" she heard him ask someone nearby before he answered.

"I could fly if you'd rather not reschedule. It'll play havoc with my hair, but I'll stay low enough to avoid commercial air traffic. Tyler will hang out with a friend of mine here in Buenos Aires."

She smiled as her heart rate increased at his offer, and the realization that he wasn't backing out on their date.

"You promised me real Sichuan cuisine," She'd replied playfully as her smile grew in direct proportion to the happiness she was feeling, "I believe the word you used was authentic."

"We can wait if you're still set on going to China for lunch, or you can pick some place in the city, and we can do China next time."

"Fine, we can have lunch here," Beth answered, laying it on thick while she pretended to be disappointed, even as she was about to burst from sheer joy at the prospect that there would also be a next time."

"Great. I know a place that serves excellent pastrami, if you're interested."

"How about a bite to eat?" Trish asked.

It was still early; they would be back again in about ten hours, but the restaurant would be closed then. Beth's Firebolt was in the parking garage around the corner on 1st street. Her suit, which now included a wig that was a close match for Trish's (and Kate's), and a simple black mask that wouldn't obscure her lenses, were in the UV cleaner, less than ten steps away from where her best friend was sitting.

"Bring me back a three-piece," Julia said as they walked towards the door at the center of the large glass panels that reminded both women of similar panels they had recently seen in a suburb outside Moscow.

It's nice to have friends to share life with, Beth thought to herself, and an actual life to look forward to.