[ where it begins ]

[fanofthegenre]

She needs to change. She keeps a spare set of clothes at the 12th - but they're meant for the shifts where she pulls an all-nighter and doesn't have time to go home.

They're not for this, for the red that stains the white of her sweater - someone else's (I'm fine, Castle, it's not my blood). She was just supposed to have a conversation. She'd

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[trigger_man]

Jack had been out of the bar for most of the day; hadn't really been planning to return that night. But after washing grease off his hands--his truck was acting up, not something he needed at the moment--he'd opened the fridge for a beer and found it empty.

He's only just taken a seat at the bar when the door opens and he glances over to see who's coming in. He gets about as far as opening his mouth to say Beckett's name when just what that is staining her sweater sinks in.

The blood drains out of his head, a chill washing over him, and it feels as though his heart stops. In that second, it's not just Beckett that he sees; his mind's eyes is filled with an image he still remembers with crystal clarity after almost ten years.

(ten years in three months from now, actuallyHis feet start moving him toward her without consciously thinking, instinct taking over. He pushes his way past patrons, not really paying any attention to who he's passing

[fanofthegenre]

Beckett's not thinking about the blood. She hasn't thought about the blood since Raglan was shot and died on the floor of the diner, since the moment she realized it wasn't her who had been hit.

What's more important now is trying to figure out what Raglan wanted to tell her after all those years of silence, and whether or not it was that information (of course it was, it had to be) that actually got him killed tonight.

She starts to slump onto a barstool, brushing her hair away from her face with a hand, when she senses movement along her side and turns to see Jack - looking as though he's seen a ghost, his face completely devoid of any healthy color, struggling to speak.

The reason for it - the blood she still happens to be wearing - hasn't yet clicked for her.

"Jack," she murmurs, but she can't put on a convincing smile - or even say much of anything else, for that matter.

[trigger_man]

In that second Jack finds his voice, but the cold dread doesn't start to lift. He looks at her eyes for a moment, before his eyes drift down to the bloody stain on her chest.

"What happened? Are you okay? Are you--?"

He can't bring himself to say it.

[fanofthegenre]

Her gaze follows his down.

(I made a bad mistake and that started the dominoes falling)

"It's not mine," she says quietly. "I - I was on my way to change, when - "