attackfish

Written for round two, Hopes and Fears of the

wc_women_fest, a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.

For Want of A

He made it almost a whole year into his sentence before he started promising to settle down when he got out. Kate just shook her head and reminded him over and over again that he didn't have it in him. It was like he thought that was what she wanted.

On the way home, the plans came fast and fierce, catching her up and dragging her with them like a rip tide, two man cons, three man cons, four man cons five man cons. Museum heists, bank heists, scams, everything under the sun. She gathered blueprints and schismatics, and piled them up in her apartment to fill he empty space.

We he got out, she planned to show him all of them, and she could imagine his face when she took charge and handed him a job for once.

The day after Neal had been arrested, Moz showed up to yell at her, and she threw him out. He came back a few times, but she never let him get farther than "he's in jail because of you," and eventually he stopped coming. Now she wished she could get hold of him.

She saw Alex sometimes, brought her ideas, helped her out with jobs, and tried not to remember the way Neal had tried to con her into joining them in Europe. The way he thought he needed to.

And every week, she went down to the prison, to talk about nothing, and wait for the day he'd be free.

Believing Makes it Real

She wasn't the daughter of a cop, like the others. She wasn't the sister to a family of cop brothers, she wasn't the niece of cops on both sides, the granddaughter and cousin of cops. She had only married one, and she wasn't married to one anymore.

This was a good thing. It made it easier for her to leave when he left her. In the first town they moved to, when the other cops' wives finally drove her away, hounded her out as if she had known, as if she were the one who had stolen the drugs, sold out his partner, and run, as if it were all her fault, and they just wished they could lock her away, she told everybody her husband had died a hero cop. Well, he was dead to her.

And when her son asked... Well. The truth was whatever she made it.

With the Times

Men at work sometimes talked about the signs to look for if they were worried their girlfriends wanted a wedding, bridal magazines around the house, making friends with their boyfriend's moms, mentioning a friend who had just gotten married, horrible things like that, and Diana just laughed. Of course all girls were supposed to want to get married, weren't they.

Christie didn't buy bridal magazines or sigh over wedding dresses, and she was already as friendly with Diana's family as she was ever going to get. She dropped the bombshell on her without any forewarning or preamble while they ate lunch at a place near Christie's work, and Diana choked on a piece of lettuce. "What?"

"Now that we can..."

Diana coughed the lettuce out of her throat and swallowed it, grimacing. "We're only been going out together for-" she added it up silently. "Two years."

"And we've been living together for almost that long," Christie wore the gentle smile she got when Diana was never going to win.

"But still!"

"Well we don't have to get married right away!" she exclaimed worriedly. "Lot's of people have long engagements."

Oh God, Diana thought, that's what it would be, they would be engaged. She swallowed and tried to find the air to make the words. "Can I have some time to think about it?"

"Oh no, I already bought the cake. Of course." Wrapping a hand around Diana's neck, she pulled her close and kissed her, nibbling her lower lip and drawing it into her mouth.

Diana batted her away. "I can't believe you just proposed to me."

Christie sat back. "I probably should have bought you a ring first, shouldn't I?"

"No problem," she said weakly. "Oh man, now I want cake."

"I'll pick up some on the way home."

Becoming Someone

When she was three, she wanted to be a ballerina, because her parents bought her a tutu with gold sparkles. When she was five, she wanted to be an astronaut (and maybe a ballerina too). Astronauts got to go into space. When she was seven, she wanted to travel to Africa to study lions and wildebeests, because her sister said it was crazy. When she was nine, she wanted to be a model, because another girl in her class got to have her headshot taken, and when she was eleven, she wanted to be an actress, because it sounded more fun than modeling.

When she was thirteen, she wanted to be a cop, because at least she could do it better than the idiots who weren't even trying to find her sister. A brick wall could do it better than the idiots who weren't even trying to find her sister.

When she was fifteen, she wanted to be a thief, or a fence, or a smuggler, or an internal affairs cop, or anybody who worked against the police. When she was seventeen, she just wanted to make it though English class. When she was nineteen, she didn't know who she wanted to be, and she couldn't bring herself to care about what.

The day she got her job, she decided she was going to make it work. It was a challenge. It could even be fun sometimes.

She liked returning people's things.

But she only ever returned things, not people.

Baseball and the Art of Soothing Nightmares

"You can't let the eel play shortstop," she muttered, burrowing deeper into the pillow, and Christie snorted. "Salmon's got to be the short stop."

"I thought it had to be the clownfish," she whispered into Diana's ear, but Diana was too asleep to hear her. She lay back down and closed her eyes. he smell Diana's shampoo and the diesel city smells mixed together, and she breathed them in, trying to let them soothe her mind and lull her off to sleep. It was always those first few nights with someone new in her bed, the unfamiliarity that kept her awake.

The lights from passing cars crept through the cracks in the blinds and disappeared again. Christie kept her eyes close and breathed deep, drawing the air in and out, in and out, in and out...

"Nnnnnnng," It was only when Cristie woke to Diana's voice that she realized that Diana had stopped talking at some point as she slept. "Nnnnnnno,"

"Hey," she grabbed Diana's shoulder. "Baby, wake up.

Breathing hard, Diana opened her eyes. "Oh God."

"Hey," Christie whispered. "What was that about?"

"Nothing," she muttered, eyes pointing up to the indistinct blackness of the room above them. Somewhere up there was the ceiling, and beyond that, the apartment above them, and the roof, and the sky, but the darkness closed them in and built a bubble around them, making it seem as if it were only them, alone in the world. "I'm fine."

"Somehow I don't believe that." Christie ran her hand over Diana's arm, wet with pinprick drops of sweat. "You going to tell me about your dream, or do I have to drag it out of you?"

"It's stupid," Diana growled. "It's nothing, it's-"

There were still tears running down Diana's face. Her eyes were still locked, wide open. Christie snorted. "It'll go so much easier if you just tell me."

Diana swallowed and forced her voice to remain level. "We just started sleeping together. I'm not dumping this on you, I'm just... I'm not."

"Well, you already woke me up. Might as well make it worth my while by telling me a story."

Diana sighed. "Yeah, and my dream would make the perfect story, you're thinking."

Lying back down on the pillow, Christie raised one hand. "Now you're getting somewhere."

She swallowed again. "I just keep dreaming that I showed up to crime scene, an I let somebody get away, and somebody ends up dead. Sometimes it's me, or somebody I work with, sometimes it's some shmuck in the crowd, sometimes, it's the guy I'm supposed to be arresting, but it's always my fault, because somehow, I screwed up." The words had started coming faster and faster as she spoke, and when she stopped, it felt like she had crashed into something. "This time, it was my parents."

"Everybody's afraid of failing," Christie whispered.

Diana's hand gripped her wrist. "But this could really happen! If I screw up, somebody could end up dead."

"It could happen to me too! I could go into work tomorrow,and give somebody the wrong drug, or misdiagnose them, and they could end up dead," she said quietly. "But it's not going to happen. To either of us."

"You can't know that," Diana snapped.

"You know, you were talking in your sleep about fish playing baseball earlier."

"What does that..." Shivering, Diana trailed off as Christie ran her fingers over her scalp.

"Your dreams don't mean anything," she murmured reassuringly. Then the words she had just said hit her. "I can't believe I just said that."

"Never have kids," Diana ordered her shakily, trying to muster a smile.

She giggled. "Hey kiddies, I know what your teacher said about following your dreams, but your dreams mean nothing, so suck it up."

Diana buried her head in her girlfriend's arms. "Only whiny oversensitive crybabies have dreams anyway."

"I'll tell that to my old boss for psych rotation." Her hand moved down to rub slow circles with the heel of her hand on Diana's shoulders. "I think you're onto a real medical breakthrough."

Diana let out a tiny puff of air against Christie's skin, which she hoped was supposed to be laughter.