(Cross posted to AO3, canon pairings only, a healthy dose of awesome friendships and general team shenanigans.)

(Also Jenny and Javier are friends and get along fabulously because why not.)

Because exactly what I needed in my life was another multichapter fanfic. Ah well. I digress. This fic is set between episode ten and episode eleven of season six. Within these words you will find no spoilers for episode eleven (Under Fire) save that it was one of the best episodes of anything I have ever seen in my life which is saying a lot given the copious amounts of television I watch.

Anyhow.

Please do leave a review and tell me what you think!

god grew lonely

in the days before light

so he made himself an heir

and in the same breath

invented regret.

- tumblr user screwballdame

Chapter One

When it happened, the change was immediate and obvious. Kevin Ryan had always been a quiet man, but after returning from lunch one day he shut down, hardly speaking a word that wasn't prompted of him. Even for him that was unusual, and after failing to rise to several comments from Javier, his co-workers became concerned. In theory it had been just another Tuesday on which they were just catching up on paperwork, and Kevin had left early, presumably to have lunch with Jenny. They did that whenever they could (not often, they both had rather busy schedules, though Jenny had cut back a bit on hours since she had entered her third trimester), and no one saw anything odd about it.

The oddness began when he returned. Kevin walked into the station stiff backed and tight lipped, the strangest expression they had ever seen him wear on his paler-than-usual face. He looked for all the world as if he had just seen a ghost, and not one he was particularly keen on encountering again. Brushing off various inquiries by Javier, Kate, and Rick, he had sat down at his desk and opened one of the files stacked there, methodically filling in answers and checking boxes. All evidence suggested he hadn't gone to seen Jenny, and when asking him only resulted in his posture going even straighter than it already had been and a clipped 'nowhere important', they decided to leave it be. Javier hadn't been happy with leaving it at that but Kate, who had always had the best grasp of 'tact' of the four of them, had told him to drop it. 'If what's going on is really important, he'll tell you eventually. If it's dangerous and for whatever reason he won't talk to us, you can bet Jenny will call you,' she had said, and it made sense, so Javier had backed off.

Later, he would wish he hadn't.

But none of them knew that yet, so they merely carried on with life as usual, moving through stacks of paperwork and puzzling out a fresh case. About three days after the sudden shift in Kevin's behavior, Javier got the call Kate had predicted.

Jenny sounded worried on the other end, the concern thick enough that even through the slight distortion of a phone line, Javier could tell something was up. The phone rang at his desk while Kevin was momentarily elsewhere, but just in case he took it into the break room, answering it just before it could ring out.

"Hey, Jenny. Is something wrong? Do I need to go get Kevin?"

It wasn't like it was his fault if Kevin's increasing nerves over her approaching due date had gotten to him a bit. Besides, what with the strange way things had been the last few days, god only knew what it could be about.

"Actually, it's about Kevin." Her tone was troubled, and Javier frowned, looking out the window of the break room to see Kevin walk back and sit down at his desk. A million different scenarios ran through his head, most of them ending very badly for his friend. Before he could let his imagination get the better of him, Javier shook himself and refocused on the phone call.

"What's up? Is he okay?"

"That's sort of why I'm calling. I'm worried about him, Javi," Jenny confessed. "He's been acting funny. I know you've got to have noticed it, right? But whatever it is, he won't talk to me about it. I tried to get him to the day it started and he all but begged me not to ask. Has he said anything to you?"

"No, he hasn't," Javier said, shooting another glance out the window to be sure nobody was coming in. He didn't like discussing his best friend with his wife behind the man's back, but Jenny was a friend too now, and she sounded really worried. And if he hadn't been equally as worried before, he was now. "He went out somewhere to lunch a couple'a days ago and he's been kinda strange ever since."

"Oh. Oh, okay." She seemed to be regrouping, having held out with the hope that maybe Kevin had mentioned something to Javier that he hadn't said to her. "I just wish he would talk to me. I wish I knew what was going on."

There wasn't much the detective could think to do but repeat Kate's assurances of three days ago, putting as much confidence in the words as he could muster. Certainly more than he had felt when they'd been said them to him.

"I'm sure that if something's really wrong he would have told you. 'Sides, you know Kevin. He'll fess up when he's ready."

Jenny seemed to be at least partially satisfied by this answer. "Alright. Just... Keep an eye on him, please?"

"You know I will. Bye Jenny."

"Bye Javi. Thanks."

Hanging up the phone, Javier walked slowly back out of the break room towards his desk, trying to process what Jenny had said to him. Whatever it was he wasn't even talking to her about it, which made the whole thing a lot more serious than he had initially thought. Something was going on with Kevin and he wouldn't tell anyone about it, which meant that, for the time being at least, all Javier could do about the situation was do as Jenny asked and keep an eye on him.

When he sat back down, Kevin didn't ask where he had been. One more hint in the middle of a hundred others that his mind wasn't all the way there at the moment. Kevin always asked where he'd been, where anyone'd been. No matter how long they were gone, if he didn't know what was up, Kevin asked. Not this time. This time he stared at his desk, at the form he had finished filling out five minutes ago.

Kate returned with Rick a few moments later and though he couldn't possibly have forgotten about it, his conversation with Jenny was all but shoved to the back of his mind. The situation was put on a back burner for another few days, until almost exactly a week after Kevin's mystery lunch. The case sounded normal, a body found in an alley. However when Kate and Rick got to the scene, they found out pretty quickly that it was going to be anything but.

…

The afternoon was crisp and quiet, or as quiet as it ever got in New York City, in the middle of January. Kate Beckett pulled her coat collar up and sipped her coffee.

"I'm just saying," Rick said persuasively, moving along in a sort of sideways shuffle so he could look at her and not trip at the same time.

"I am not getting married on a boat. I don't even like boats."

"Come on, everybody loves boats! Think about it. Twinkling lights. Lapping waves. Bioluminescent phytoplankton."

"Bioluminescent what?"

Rick was stopped before he could continue by Lanie, who got up and walked around to stand between the two of them and the body, blocking their view.

"What can you tell me?" Kate asked her friend, a little put off by Lanie shielding them from the body.

"White male, I'd say mid to late twenties. No ID, so I'm not entirely sure." As Kate and Rick made to move around her and inspect the body, Lanie quickly stepped to the side, keeping herself in front of them. "Before you see him, you should probably prepare yourselves. It's a little. Well, I'll just let you see for yourselves."

When she finally moved out of the way, they saw instantly why she had been reluctant to let them see the dead man without some form of warning.

His skin was pale and his hair was a dark, rich brown. Astonishingly blue eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky, and the shape of his face was far, far too familiar to be comfortable. In short, he looked like a vaguely altered, younger version of Kevin Ryan.

"He..." Rick trailed off, staring at the dead man, thoroughly weirded out by the whole situation. "He looks...

"Just like Ryan," Kate finished for him. It was getting increasingly more uncomfortable for both of them, just standing there staring at the face that reminded them so much of the friend who had been behaving so oddly as of late, and so they turned to Lanie, who was back to crouching beside their latest victim's right hip.

"Do you have cause of death?" asked Kate in an attempt to divert back to the case at hand, rather than the matter of the eerie resemblance.

"Stabbed twice in the abdomen, then shot once in the chest. Neither of the stab wounds would'a killed him though, at least not right away. Hurt like hell, but if he tried to run he probably could have still gotten at least a little ways. The gunshot's what finished him off."

Just then, footfalls heralded the approach of Kevin and Javier. Despite the fact that he was still acting funny, he seemed to have gotten himself together, at least a little bit, and was even smiling at a comment of Javier's. Kate and Rick turned instantly to look at them, shuffling so that they stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the unknown dead man from the other two detectives' view.

"Morning Esposito, Ryan," Rick said, faux-casually. They caught on instantly, both immediately trying to see around their friends.

"You might want to-" Kate was cut off as she was sidestepped, unable to stop or warn them before they saw the body. Too late, they had already seen him.

Kate, Rick, and Lanie were all silent as they watched Javier and Kevin's faces change. Javier looked equal parts shocked and horrified, shooting a look from the victim to his partner then back to the victim again. The resemblance was undeniable, from the shapes of their noses to the color of their eyes. And then there was Kevin.

The man stood stock still, frozen where he'd halted upon seeing the cold, slack face. His eyes were wide and he looked for all the world as if a ghost he'd thought long dead had swooped down and alit on the ground before him.

"Like I was telling Beckett and Castle," Lanie said slowly, keeping a careful eye on the two new arrivals, waiting to see if she should stop and give them a moment. "I couldn't find any ID, so for now he's a John Doe."

"There's, ah," Kevin started, stopping abruptly and swallowing hard. He shifted for a moment, folding his arms, never looking away from the dead man's face. The face that was so eerily like a younger version of his own, like staring into a mirror, or a window years in the past. "There's no need. I, um, I know who he is. His name is Connor. Connor Ryan. He's, ah. He's my brother."

Silence.