Chapter Text
Kate dreamt that she was a wolf, and that her snout was filled with blood.
She dreamt that she prowled through the streets and ripped out the throats of every innocent child and woman in sight. She always woke up drenched in sweat, bile in her throat.
This is the lands of wolves now, he had said, and you are not a wolf.
But she was, in her dreams.
Depression, the afternoon shadow, always crept up on her in the middle of some mind-numbing desk job. She would glance at Reggie and smile while her insides shredded themselves to pieces. Maybe her smile was fractured, because Reggie only looked worried.
She had tried, in her mind, to quit. Quit the FBI and abide Alejandro's good advice. Move to a small town.
She never got past opening her mouth and saying, "I q..."
She wasn't built like that, she wasn't built of fugues. She was a solid rock, the kind that warms up in the sun. She wasn't going anywhere, because rocks don't move.
Was she a wolf or a rock?
What happened was simple. Matt took her off his extremely classified task force, for which she was grateful. Grateful, but also hateful. He was scum, tolerable, yet plain scum.
The problem was, his removal put a dent in her record. And she had to move back five pieces. Her superiors no longer thought she could work well under pressure. They thought she needed a break, something to get her back up on that horse. That's how she found herself doing so much paper work her eyes became blurred. She wondered, sometimes, if it was worth even breathing, which was a really dangerous thought.
Kate was not suicidal, it's just that she had little left to breathe for. Her integrity - that old piece of rotten metal - had faded into obscurity.
She was alone.
It was better this way, in the end. She came home from work at a reasonable hour and even had time to microwave the take-out lasagna. She had time for a bath too. No more meager showers. These were quiet actions, done with the foreknowledge that they meant nothing and harmed no one - and there was a release in that.
The blood on her snout still smelled fresh.
It was inexplicable - why should she feel guilty for what Alejandro had done? Didn't she know that was a sure path to destruction?
She did.
The days had a way of repeating themselves, until it was Tuesday and she had to ask Reggie if they got to leave early today because it was a Friday.
"Okay, intervention time," Reggie decided. "We're going out dancing."
Kate hadn't danced since - since that man had put his hands around her throat and squeezed with all his might. She remembered that night vividly, as well as Alejandro's timed arrival. Looking back on it, she knew there had been nothing chivalrous or heroic about his rescue. He had been tracking her, had perhaps even hoped this would happen, so that he might worm his way into her private state of mind and make her trust him, make her question herself, rather than him.
Joke's on him, she thought bleakly. I questioned myself before. Now I don't. I don't anymore.
She watched Reggie dance with a pretty girl and she smiled in her beer. She had barely touched it, but it felt impolite to sit there, dry and sober. At least make an attempt, Kate.
She looked around the bar with a lazy eye and caught several shadows, movements of light, nothing more. But they spoke to her in an intimate way and she was drawn to them, despite her better judgement.
She checked the rest room before going inside a stall to relieve herself.
She didn't check hard enough. She had really stopped questioning herself. Too bad.
When they took her, she barely had time to scream.
She only had memories of a struggle and an ugly bruise on her jaw.
And there had been words too. Words she had almost captured, mid-consciousness.
"Es ella. La chica de Alejandro."
Alejandro's girl.