Author: AuditoryEden

Rating: T

Warnings: Mental illness, hallucinating, minor character death

Notes: Sorry about all the not writing for two years.

Another Path

Kate was ecstatic when she got accepted to Quantico, thrilled that she was about to embark on her career as a law enforcement professional, following in the footsteps of her father and his father before that. You remember just how thrilled she was; she'd told you about wanting to apply, you'd written a recommendation, you'd helped calm her down when something went wrong with her transcripts, you'd basically held her hand through the process.

So naturally when she got the letter, she went straight to you.

She'd careened into your office, glowing, excited, adorable, babbling madly, and you had hugged her, congratulated her, shared her joy and sang her praises. You'd been so, so proud of her, you remember.

You were so proud of her you felt you could burst, and that was probably the first inkling you had that you loved her—no, that you were in love with her. But the big revelation, that didn't happen til later.
That part wasn't until after her father died.
She'd been glowing with excitement when she burst into your office with her acceptance from Quantico, near tears with happiness and babbling like a brook. The next time she burst into your office, she was in tears again, babbling hysterically for another reason entirely.

Officer Joe Moretti of the Chicago PD had been shot and killed in the street, the victim of the latest gang violence. That was the last time you heard Kate so much as mention Quantico for a lot of years.

You went to the funeral, even though you had only a passing acquaintance with the dead man. Kate had asked you to be there, not quite pleading but with a brittle note in her voice that told you the true story. She might not have said it, but you knew that she needed you there, for whatever reason. So you went, acted respectfully, and when Kate came over and attached herself to your arm, looking like she was about to snap, you let her cling close even though she was still your student and it was totally inappropriate. You looked down at her face as she watched her father being buried and saw her as a woman for the first time; Kate wasn't a giddy teen anymore, wasn't just a student reveling in life, or an enthusiastic young woman setting out to grab her future with both hands. In her face, you saw an ache, a resignation. It was like being punched in the chest. That was when you first realized you'd fallen in love with her.
She didn't go to Quantico.
It wasn't a wonder to you, but you let her explain anyway, nodding and accepting her words as though you hadn't already known what she was going to say. Her mother had begged her, she told you, and seeing her dad after what had happened, she knew she couldn't go through with it, couldn't do that every day for the rest of her life. There were plenty of ways she could help people, she explained, a little desperately. She'd be graduating with her degree in a few months. The thought of not going into the FBI seemed to wrack her with guilt, but at the same time she shuddered when she thought about it, remembering how her father had died.
It wasn't your job to fix her, you knew that. You weren't there to judge her or convince her. You were there to let her talk herself into believing that she was making the right choice, or at least a good choice. So you let her go on and on at you, until she finally just cried.
You got the feeling that it was the first time she'd let herself really cry since she got the news.
She spent a month vacillating, saying she was looking for a new job or at another grad program, trying to get advice from you, talking her way through her classes and her minor and what she could do. Finally you suggested that she consider psychology, something she'd always been good at but had never really pursued. Next thing you knew, she was applying to a certification program for counselors, and looking at taking a few more classes through CLMU after graduation.
The Kate Moretti who earned her certification as a trauma counselor, and at age twenty-seven was working on her doctorate, was a very different Kate than the one you had met nine years ago in Intro to Neuroscience. She was a more somber person, more studious, more focused. You thought sometimes that she might have been happier in the FBI after all; she had this amazing spirit that wasn't totally suited to working with trauma victims, a little too bright, a little too quick. She wasn't a soft, warm person on the surface, though how much of that had to do with her father's death you didn't know. What you did know, though, was that the elements of danger in working for the FBI would have brought out the very best of her. Sometimes it brought you down to remember how her dream had been shattered, but she was happy in her life, found her job fulfilling, and rarely complained about anything but workloads, which she claimed were heinous.
When she was twenty-four, completing her certification and applying for jobs at local hospitals, you realized over coffee that she still called you Professor Pierce.
It was awkward saying it, but you did. "You can call me Daniel, you know." She gave you this look at first, totally non-comprehending, and you stared into your tea, avoiding her eyes. "It's been a while since I was your professor," you tried to explain, and the blank look was replaced with a smile that bordered on sly.
"Alright then. Daniel," she said, testing the sound of your name. It sounded better than you'd ever dared to dream it would. That was the beginning of the shift in your relationship, from student and teacher, to friends, to lovers.
The second part happened right after she finished writing her dissertation. You had been editing it for her, both of you camped out in your office with hot beverages a couple nights a week, and then you had an incident.
Kate knew that you had some kind of disorder, something you took medication for, at least sometimes, but she didn't know that you were schizophrenic. It had never come up, since she had never witnessed you having an episode, and you had never dared to broach the topic yourself, too afraid of driving her away.

Kate was laid out on the couch, reading over your latest manuscript, and you were sitting in one of the chairs, slumped over the coffee table with your red pen in hand, examining the minutiae of her phrasing and grammar, when someone knocked on the door.

You ignored it. Anyone important would come in, you knew, and office hours were over, so a student could come and see you in the morning.

The knock came again, and you sighed, slipping your glasses off as you stood, rubbing a hand over your eyes. As the door knocked a third time, you cursed impatient students, opening the door only to be faced with Natalie.

"What're you doing here?" you asked her, and she smiled in that soft way of hers.

"I'm just visiting, Daniel. You said you were helping Kate with her dissertation, I wondered how it was going."

"It goes," you told her, and then you turned to Kate, who was watching you with a puzzled look. "Kate, this is Natalie, she's an old school friend of mine. Natalie, Kate."

The look on Kate's face didn't resolve itself. If anything, she only looked more alarmed. "Daniel," she said haltingly. "Daniel, do you—there's..." she broke off and bit her lip.

"You didn't tell me she was so shy, Daniel," Natalie observed, amused, and you shot her an ironic look.

"Hush," you told her, and turned back to Kate. "What's wrong?"

This time she answered you, looking heartbroken and worried. "Daniel, there's no one there."

"What?" you asked. "What are you talking about. It's Natalie, Kate, Natalie, like I told you about from grad school?" There was a feeling of panic rising in your chest. You knew what was happening, that Natalie wasn't really there, from the first glance at Kate's face. But Natalie has to be here—she teaches here now, you've talked to her a dozen times in the last two weeks. You know that Natalie is real. So why would you be hallucinating her?

"There's no one there," Kate corrected you, gently. "Daniel..."

You gritted your teeth, eyes darting between Natalie and Kate, unsteady and unsure. "You can't see her," you asked Kate in an undertone. "You don't see Natalie."

"No," she told you.

You couldn't stop the note of pain in your voice. "She teaches here! She's real!"

"Am I, Daniel?" Natalie asks you, and you freeze with your eyes on her.

"What did you say?" you breathe, and Kate frowns.

"I didn't say anything."

"Not you, Natalie," you tell her, waving her away, eyes fixed on the blonde woman.

Natalie smiles at you, with that wonderful warm grin that got you hooked in the first place. "I may not be real, Daniel," she tells you in a practical tone. "With your condition and everything, how do you know I ever real to begin with?"

"You were!" you insist. "Are! Nat, why are you—?"

"Daniel," Kate interrupts you, "What is going on?"

You stop again, torn between the two women, but Kate looks properly scared by now and Natalie is still smiling at you like she hasn't got a care in the world, so you turn your back on her.

Kate is giving you the most painful look you've ever received. There's sadness in it, and pity, and fear. "Daniel, just how sick are you?" she asks, voice ash soft. Her skin seems very white, glowing against her dark hair and the blue fleece of her sweatshirt, and her eyes are dark and bright in her face.

"I-I'm not...I—" You can't get the words out.

She cuts you off. "Daniel, you've just been talking to thin air." Don't try to tell me there's nothing wrong.

You can't help yourself, you give her a hard stare. No one's ever forced you to admit your diagnosis before; most people back off when they realize you've got a condition. It drives you crazy, but this may be worse.

"Kate—"

"Don't Kate me. Daniel, just tell me what's wrong!"

She's so little and fierce, moving closer every time she yells at you, so now she's standing close enough to touch. Your papers lie forgotten on the table, and the red pen holds your attention.

It takes a tremendous will of effort to tell her.

"I'm a paranoid schizophrenic," you say, and you won't look at her, because you don't want to watch as the relationship you've had for the past nine years re-writes itself in her mind.

There's a long moment of silence, before Kate says, "God, Daniel, why didn't you ever tell me?"

A quick glance at her face tells you that she's still pitying you. For nearly ten years you'd gotten to be near her without having to feel the sting of her pity, but that's over now. You should've known it would come to this.

You can't answer her, because she knows full well why you never told her. It was a stupid question, something to fill the air. Something to distract you both. It might even have worked, but you can still feel Natalie behind you. Her breathing is a soft ostinato at the edge of your hearing, the rustle of her clothes as she shifts a delicate accent. She feels real, too real, but Kate can't see her, and if there's anyone you trust implicitly it's Kate. But Natalie's eyes are on you, and you can feel them burning into your back. The woman you loved once. The woman you love now. You're stretched between them.

Kate stands up on tip-toe, hair swinging hypnotically behind her, and you flinch as her arms thread around your shoulders, fingers sliding through uncut hair.

"Daniel," she says, not really addressing you so much as airing notice that she's still there.

As though you could possibly forget. You reply on autopilot.

"Kate." Your voice is rougher than usual, lower. You aren't acknowledging so much as asking.

She feels bad for you, you can tell. This pathetic old man, alone and crazy, talking to delusions of girls he dated years ago. It's vibrating out of her skin and burrowing into yours. Every point where she touches you is like a burr, digging and digging and making you bleed. Your heart has frozen in your chest and you're not certain which way is up anymore.

Kate somehow persuades you to walk, to sit. She perches herself next to you and watches silently as you fight yourself. It takes her a long time to catch on—you're not going to say anything to her. You're too afraid. But finally she takes the plunge.

"Why didn't you ever tell me you were sick, Daniel?"

She doesn't sound like she's accusing you. You look up, trying to get a good look at her, wanting to decode her feelings, but Natalie catches your eye.

She's still there, smiling that soft little smile.

"Go away," you say, eyes fixed on the blonde woman.

"Daniel?" Kate asks, recoiling a little.

"Not you. Go away," you repeat, and Natalie shakes her head, amused.

"I can't just go, Daniel," she tells you saucily. "You have to let me. I don't think you really want to talk to Kate about this, do you? Or I wouldn't be here."

That's the kind of taunting speech known delusions tend to give you. It's like this wonderful woman has been transformed of enchanted or something, and now she's turning into this strange, ugly creature, one with just enough of its original features to twist the knife a little harder.

"Natalie, please," you half-beg, and she shrugs and turns to the door.

"I'll be back soon," she promises you with a flirtatious wink. You've never desired her advances less.

When she's gone your eyes slide closed, and you try very hard to cease to exist. It's not fooling Kate, though. She's known you for long enough to know that you are avoiding the issue.

"Daniel?"

"She's gone," you inform her hollowly. You've fixed your eyes on the red pen again. It's garish against the manuscript paper, too bright, like badly applied lipstick, a desperate smear across your vision.

Kate doesn't answer right away. She keeps silent for a moment first, a small hand rubbing circles on your shoulder, and even though you want to die right now, there's a tightness, a nervous tension in your abdomen, a half-sick, half-anticipatory feeling that seeps into your diaphragm.

"You never told me about this," she finally says. Again, it's not really accusing, but there's a note of confusion in her tone. Like she's lost. Like she's been betrayed.

"What was I supposed to say?" you ask her. It might have been a demand, but you've lost too much of your cockiness and your ego from this incident. "Hey, I know this may sound a little freaky but I'm a schizophrenic?"

She laughs in a near-tears kind of way, and you will not meet her eyes. The distance between your thighs and hers has been steadily decreasing as she edges closer to you, and this is not how you thought it would be. Kate—bless her—isn't leaving. She hasn't stormed out yet and at this rate she'll be sitting in your lap before the evening's out. She's close to you. She hasn't reviled you. Not yet.

"How long...?" she attempts, and you debate deliberately misunderstanding her.

You've told her enough lies, you decide. She's your equal now, in many ways your superior. She can hear the truth of things. "Thirteen years ago. I was diagnosed when I was twenty-two."

"And when you vanished, that was..."

The grimace takes over your face before you can stop it. "I was in the hospital," you confirm.

"Your meds?" There's a low note of panic in her tone now; she's realized that the medication you're forever jumping on and off of is for something more serious than moods.

"I take them when I have to," is all the comfort you can offer her. Now you're really expecting her to leave you. She'll play protective friend for a few months, but she'll start slipping away. She wont come by your office any more, she'll rely on her adviser for her dissertation. She'll start cutting you out of her life. A cold, animal panic sparks to life in your gut.

"Daniel," she says.

You break free of her, standing suddenly. "I'm sorry," you tell her frantically, and your feet are carrying you out the door. You're not faster than her, but she's surprised. You can feel the green under your sneakers, and home—the relative safety of your room, the peace and quiet of being alone—is close. Long experience has taught you that Kate's gone now. You probably won't see her again any time soon, and if you do it will be a study in forced smiles and carefully plotted space. Kate is the dearest person in your world, she has been since that cold December morning by her father's grave. Maybe longer. The pounding of your heart and your sneakers on the ground give your thoughts a beat, keep them organized, and it's the only thing that keeps you from spinning out of control.

You don't look back for even a second. You don't see the woman with the china face come flying out of the building after you. You don't see her staring at your back as you retreat.

As your fight with the front door, you're pretty sure that you've hit the edge of your cliff.

The hospital ceiling is that awful cardboard stuff. White paper foam riddled with thousands and thousands of tiny holes like ugly stars on a flat grey sky. You could probably get up or at least turn over, give yourself a change of scenery, but the lethargy in your bones and the pain in your hands is enough to dampen the urge to do more than resent the ceiling for sitting over you like a cloud pressing on your chest. It looms, devours, but you know yourself. You're not going to try to escape it because it's easier to lie on your back and stare.

And it's easier to be devoured by a morass of black holes above you, than it is to think about the life that waits for you outside the hospital's walls.

Behind the aching haze of the sedatives they gave you last night, there's a memory. Shards of broken glass—a mirror maybe, or a picture frame, you can't quite call it to mind—and a taunting blonde woman sitting on the counter in your kitchen, an ugly sort of smile fixed onto her face. You remember the sensation of something leaving your grasp at speed, the sensation of something slipping into the palm of your hand like a wraith before the searing pain reached your brain. Someone was pounding on the door of the house, and Natalie was still just sitting there, smiling complacently, kicking her feet a little against the cabinets as she watched you scrambling on the floor in a mess of your own blood. Someone came storming in, someone called 911. The faces are blurred and indistinct.

But you do remember that Kate knows now.

She can't get to you in here—after a stunt like this one no one but family will be allowed in for a week, maybe more—but the sick panic still lies over your stomach like an icy slime. She didn't reject you. You rejected her.

You're glad they've pumped you full of drugs, for once. Natalie can't come and tell you just how very stupid you were. Can't show up and remind you that you're not sure who she is or if she's real, a doubt you've never faced before. Can't remind you that if you hadn't been using her as a crutch, if you hadn't been holding out for your grad school sweetheart, you might have told Kate before this. You might have told Kate that you love her.

Or the sun might shine in hell.

Ghosts of music are playing in your ears now, and you can't tell if you're having delusions or are simply imagining the sounds to help fill the silence of the room.

The door opens. It's a strange counterpoint to the melodies, but an interesting percussive effect, and so you ignore it, and the visitor it heralds.

It's probably Rosenthal, after all, and you don't really want to talk to him.

"Daniel?" a familiar voice calls. Rosenthal. Checking on you, no doubt. It's painfully ironic that you met him for the first time at a seminar you were giving on a particular kind of anti-psychotic. "Daniel, you have someone to see you."

Whoever it is, you don't want to see them. Don't want to see concern, disgust, pity, whatever it is they'll feel when they see you.

The grey dots hold your vision, trapped amongst their small dark bodies.

The hinge creaks as it opens wider. Murmuring voices. The door closes again, but there's still someone there.

"Daniel," she says.

You can't breathe, and your eyes are fixed up on the ceiling, because there is no way it's really her. She's not your family, Rosenthal knows her well enough to know that, and you're not supposed to see people; you got violent and injured yourself. If she can't be here, then...

"So I'm gonna start hallucinating you now, too?" you ask, voice dead, and your hand clenches, sending a stab of nauseating pain up your arm.

"I'm not a hallucination, Daniel," Kate tells you, and you still can't look at her.

"You can't possibly be here, so you must be."

"I'm not." She's moved across the room, and she's standing over you now, abruptly filling your vision. Her eyes are rimmed with red and her lashes seem darker than usual. Her lips are dry. Guilt wracks you.

"How did you get in?"

She smiles at you, and her lips so a little white around the edges where the skin's too dry. "I told them I was your girlfriend. I figured it was the only way they'd let me in."

You're still a little too doped up to react to that with the appropriate dismay. Instead you raise your eyebrow incrementally and say, "Rosenthal bought that?"

"He didn't," she denies, shaking her head. "But I think he felt bad for me. Or you. I don't know."

She reaches for your hand and hisses as she finally notices the bandages. "Oh my god, Daniel," Kate mutters, "What the hell did you do?"

"You don't know?"

"No." She gives you a curious look. "I heard sirens from your office last night and I got to your house in time to see the ambulance driving away. No one would tell me what was actually wrong, only that you hadn't been too badly hurt."

The haze is starting to lift, and you're swiftly discovering that it was concealing a headache under its foggy blanket. "I don't know. I can't remember.

"It's the drugs," you tell her quickly, but her expression doesn't shift. "The medications to stop people from hallucinating, they make me stupid."

It's probably a good thing you're as drugged as you are. You're not going to go screaming for the hills, and the fuzziness makes you unusually direct and keeps you calm. That may be the last of the sedatives, though.

"So..." Kate begins, "They have you on anti-psychotics..."

"Probably pain meds and Valium," you supply. It certainly feels like Valium leaving your system.

She's giving you that hyper-concerned look again. "They had to sedate you?" she asks.

You lift a shoulder a little, some of that Styrofoam feeling in your bones fading. "Don't know. Whatever I did to my hands, must have been pretty dramatic. Or if I was yelling at..."

"A hallucination," Kate supplies, and you nod. She's still looking shell shocked behind those lovely dark eyes, and it swims into your brain that she's known about your diagnosis for less than twenty-four hours. Yet here she is, talking as easily about as if she'd visited you in the hospital a thousand times. That she lied to be able to see you makes a warm feeling start somewhere in the region of your stomach.

She's taken your hand, sort of, and now Kate settles herself on the edge of your bed. There's a chair just a little ways away, but if she doesn't want it, you don't particularly want her to leave you. The selfish, little-boy part of you wants her to stay here forever. Her weight on the mattress, the solidity of her hip on your leg and her wrist at your side. You can feel her more than you can see her, with your eyes still caught up in the black constellations.

After a long, long while, where your fingers start to feel a little numb and you've forgotten where exactly her hand starts, she speaks up. "You thought I was going to freak out, didn't you."

"When?"

She shrugs. "When you told me. If you told me, I guess."

"Yeah."

You know you don't have to explain it to her. The pair of you have known each other so well, for so long now, she can just about read your mind, though she's a little more of a closed book.

"You thought I was going to forget what you mean to me and run out on you because you're sick," she continues, with that faint sarcastic tone she usually reserves for critiques of the biggest idiots in her life.

You don't bother to reply again, since both of you know she already knows the answer.

"Goddammit, Daniel, I didn't realize you could be that stupid," she says, and though the words bite, her tone is more exasperated than spiteful. Her hand tightens on yours, and despite the pain, you relish the pressure. Finally, you tear your eyes away from the ceiling, and meet Kate's gaze.

Her eyes are bright with emotion, some kind of inner light making the deep brown glow a little golden. You feel the sudden need to catch your breath but you can't breathe.

"Kate." It comes out barely more than a whisper. For a second you think she didn't hear you, but she quirks an eyebrow at you as if to ask, "What?"

"Have I ever told you how amazing you are?" The words are raw and needy and shaking and Kate starts a little as you say them. She's not used to you being this honest with her. You haven't been this honest with anyone in decades.

"Not recently," she jokes back, unsteady. You shake your head a little, more in amusement and self-disgust than any disdain for her weak attempt at humor. If there's one thing that's becoming incredibly clear from all of this, it's that you should have told her the truth—about everything—years ago.

"Kate, I—"

Oh God she's staring at you so intently you feel like your soul is burning and if you don't do this soon the meds will wear off and your brain will turn back on and then you will never, never say it. Being a genius means that things that other people could never conceivably do are as easy as breathing—but things that those normal people would do by instinct are a war for you.

"I love you, Kate Moretti."

Instantly your stomach is assailed by nervous nausea, and you are implacably sure that you've ruined everything. Those eyes are still fixed on you but they're suddenly a thousand miles away. Her hand feels cold on yours, though her skin is hot.

She isn't moving. Isn't replying or rejecting you or laughing—god forbid. She's just sitting there and staring.

And then she's kissing you.

It's like time hiccups, and the space between Kate-frozen-like-a-statue and Kate-kissing-you-like-her-life-depends-on-it is gone, so it takes you a minute to realize what it means. It takes you a long moment to comprehend the significance of her actions; that her mouth is pressed to yours and she's clinging to your shoulders like a life preserver. It takes you a second to respond, bandaged hands sliding up to take their positions on her back and the base of her skull, like sentinels on watch.

The telling might have been a struggle but you know how to do this. This is easy. You've dreamed of doing this—of kissing her—for years.

She's the one who breaks away. She only pulls back a fraction, and her lips hover over yours, her breath heating your skin, her eyes searching yours out with a quiet, desperate sort of fervor.

"Daniel," she whispers, and you can feel the shape of your name as she says it.

Your world swells and gleams as she tells you she loves you.

It's one of those moments you never thought would come in your life; an apocryphal kind of event that takes you completely by surprise.

You of all people have always been doomed to be alone forever, with your crazies and your academia and your general scruffiness, but here is a woman, a young, witty, educated, beautiful woman, who not only apparently wants you in her life—

She loves you.

You're out of the hospital pretty quickly this time. Between the change in your relationship with Kate and upcoming finals, you're more dedicated than usual to earning your way out of the loony bin, agreeing to take your meds on the first go, and deep-breathing through frustrating sessions about your feelings and things of the sort.

Still, they manage to keep you a week.

Kate comes to see you every day, greeting you with the big heady grin she wore as the orderly frog-marched her from your room the first full day of your stay. You can feel yourself smiling back, your heart thudding insanely. It's as though having told her about your feelings has only intensified them. You still have to talk some things out between you—you may love each other, but an actual relationship takes more than just feelings—but the small things, like the feel of her fingers laced with yours, like the smell of her shampoo when you hold her, make it seem, for the first time in almost twenty-five years, like it's going to be alright. Better than alright.

For the first time you can remember, your future is looking good.

xXx

Parting Commentary: Yeah I haven't posted anything in a good long while. I was really sick last year and I've been really busy this year and the fiction bug didn't really gnaw on me much at all. This is pretty old but I decided that I like it enough to publish it so woo.

Hugs and Kisses,

Eden