Hey everyone!
Yeah, I'm still alive… I know I promised you guys a new story around Christmas and I feel so horrible for failing to upload but a lot has happened and my memory card was somehow erased and I lost all of this story. I was really pissed off because I had many chapters finished. So I sort of grieved for a while before starting to rewrite it. So here it is, here is what I could do…

This idea just came to me out of nowhere and I had to write it down. I really hope you will like it! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own the show or the characters

Chapter one

Kate rummaged through her wardrobe, pulling out drawers and pushing shirts on hangers aside. She pressed her lips tightly together, raking her mind to remember when was the last time she had seen her blue cashmere sweater.

She couldn't recall dumping it in the laundry so it must be here somewhere. She furrowed her eyebrows as she turned her back to her closet and roamed her eyes over her room. Her bed was neatly made and even though there were some folded clothes in her armchair she could see that her sweater was not there.

She knew that she was already running late and that she should just put something other on and hurry up but she couldn't help feeling frustrated. She decided last night that she would wear that sweater today and she absolutely hated to change her plans. So there she was, standing in her bra and pants in the middle of her room and chewing her lower lip.

A blunt crash broke her out of her thoughts and she rushed out into the living room to see what caused the sound. She looked around but couldn't see anything at first. Everything seemed in place, just the way she left it five minutes ago. She crossed the living room and approached the kitchen counter and that was when she heard the quiet scraping sound. She rounded the counter and her eyes fell on a tiny form, kneeling next to the ruins of a bowl of cereal.

"Matty, what are you doing?" she asked and a pair of startled, blue eyes snapped up to her.

"Mommy…I'm… I'm cleaning up!" he stuttered, his cheeks turning a shade of pink as he glanced at the pieces of porcelain in his hands. "

You shouldn't touch those. They are sharp." She told him in a scolding tone and her son instantly let go of them.

"Sorry, I just… I thought you would be angry that I broke the bowl and then I thought you would be even angrier if you had to clean it up and…" he rambled nervously.

"Matt, I'm not angry…" she swayed her head and reached down to pull him to his feet even though deep down she was in fact a bit angry at him.

She was so going to be late and now she had milk and cereal all over her kitchen floor. Moreover, Matt had to change his T-shirt because it had a huge stain on it.

"Look, sweetie!" she said, using the term of endearment she so rarely used. "Go and change your shirt and I'll clean that up. Then we can go and get you to kindergarten!" she offered and squeezed his shoulders reassuringly.

The little boy gave her a nod and ran off on short legs. Kate watched with a faint smile on her face as he disappeared in his room. Then she squatted down, retrieved a small broom from one of the cabinets then got a sponge from the sink and cleaned up the mess.

By the time she threw the pieces of the bowl out Matt was back, sporting a new T-shirt with a grinning shark on it.

"Great! Can we go?" she asked, looking around for his lunch bag. Her attention was back on him when she heard his giggle. "What?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"You're not wearing a top, mommy!" Matt told her with a grin, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Oh, right!" she remembered, looking down and seeing her gray bra. "Just, give me a minute!" she said and with a shy little smile she walked back into her bedroom.

Five minutes later they were both dressed in their jackets with scarfs wrapped around their necks to protect themselves from the early autumn chill. Kate locked the apartment and they hurried into the elevator where Matt eagerly pushed the button to the ground floor. Ever since he was tall enough to reach it, he always wanted to be the one to push the button and Kate was more than happy to let him if it made him so delighted.

When they got to the kindergarten Kate hopped out of the car and started towards the building then stopped abruptly when she realized Matt was not beside her. With a slight frown she turned back and felt a blush heat up her skin when she noticed her son wrestling a bit with the seatbelt before he started to climb out of the car.

She let out a relieved sigh because to be honest, she forgot to check before starting the car if he had fastened his seatbelt and she was glad that he was sensible enough, even at such a young age, that he remembered to do it without warning. She stepped back to his door and helped him get out before shutting it closed.

"Sorry Mom, I'm not being this clumsy deliberately, I swear!" her son told her with a shy smile and Kate let out a chuckle to cover the fact that she felt like she should be the one apologizing for almost forgetting him in the car.

"It's alright!" she reassured him then she almost jumped in surprise when she felt his tiny hand clutch hers as they crossed the street. She curled her fingers around his instantly and saw his happy smile as he glanced at her.

"Are you going to be really late, Mommy?" Matt asked worriedly just before they entered the modern building of the kindergarten.

"Not too much." Kate shrugged, knowing that Montgomery will let her off the hook anyway. Her captain had a sweet spot for Matt.

Once inside, they stopped in the busy hall, full of children running around, already playing or saying goodbye to their parents.

"Okay Matt, Tina's going to be here to pick you up and I'll see you tonight!" she told the boy, squatting down in front of him.

"I know, Mom. Have a good day and catch a lot of bad guys!" Matt grinned and threw his short arms around Kate. She patted his back hesitantly then stood up and with a smile turned and left him to play with his friends.

Kate's day went by rather quickly. Montgomery didn't even ask about her being twenty minutes late and then they got a case so the first time she had a moment to catch her breath was during the short five minutes she took as lunch break.

"So Beckett, everything okay? You seemed quite breathless this morning..." Esposito came up to her at the vending machine, genuine concern on his face but his voice had a hint of teasing in it as if suggesting he had an idea what kept Kate up.

"It's fine. Matt dropped his bowl of cereal and I had to clean it up first." she told him dryly, not being able to repress a smirk when he pursed his lips slightly. "What? Were you expecting some dirty details of a morning quickie? I thought you knew me better than that!" she laughed when he shrugged.

"I wasn't..." Espo mumbled then nudged Kate out of the way to buy a bag of chips for himself.

After lunch they had several leads to run down and by the end of the day they had a suspect in holding, waiting for them to interrogate him in the morning. Kate wanted to do it that day but Ryan pointed out that it was closing up on seven and they should all get home.

Beckett suddenly felt a surge of guilt as she realized that Matt was probably waiting for her to get home after he spent almost the entire afternoon with Tina. She agreed to continue tomorrow and in five minutes she was out of the precinct.

On the way home her mind was still on the case, there was just something wrong with it. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on...

She groaned internally when she remembered that she had to buy groceries and she was as quick as she could, only grabbing the necessities.

It was a quarter to eight when she got home and the apartment was suspiciously quiet. She slowly walked to the living room, taking off her shoes and hanging up her jacket on the way. There was semi darkness in the room and as she stopped at the foot of the couch she could hear soft voices coming from Matt's room. She strode along the corridor and paused just outside the room, pushing at the slightly open door so she could poke her head inside. She saw her son and his nanny, Tina on the bed.

Matt was already in his pajamas and under the covers and the young brunette was perched next to him above the blanket, a book in her lap and she was quietly reading to the boy who was regarding the pages with interest.

Kate didn't wait for them to notice her presence, after a moment she stepped back and without making any noise she went back into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, chewing on her lower lip as she ran her eyes over the shelves. She reached for the groceries bag on the counter and put the milk and cheese into the fridge then took out the box of leftovers from the weekend. With the box and a fork in hand she settled at the table and started eating the cold pasta inside.

About ten minutes later Tina appeared in the kitchen with a little smile on her face but she paused in her tracks when she noticed Kate.

"Miss Beckett, hello! I didn't know you were home..." she muttered and just stood there, a few feet away from the table.

Kate couldn't help but notice the slight dislike flicker across Tina's face as the nanny regarded her. It was gone in a second though and Tina started towards the couch.

"I'll just get going, then. Matt is already asleep, he was an angel, as always." she said, grabbing her jacket and bag.

"Thank you Tina!" Kate said with a smile, standing up to put the now empty box into the trash then she followed the nanny to the door and after saying goodnight she locked the door after her.

She couldn't help but feel like the nanny didn't like her at all. Tina tried her best to cover it but Kate was a detective and a pretty good one too, she could see the expressions on the other woman's face. She didn't comment on it though, Tina was great with Matt and that was all that mattered for Kate, she didn't need the nanny to like her.

She walked to the bathroom, switching off all the lights as she went then she took a shower, brushed her teeth and hit the pillow, already thinking about the interrogation tomorrow morning.

A week later Kate was running late again. She had promised her father that she would join him and Matt for dinner at his place, where her son spent his afternoon but they got a new lead and she had to run it down before it got cold then Lanie called her from the morgue that she had something for them and Kate just forgot about time. By the time she realized what the time it was, or more like was reminded of it by a certain Hispanic detective she was twenty minutes late.

After a series of hissed cursing she gathered her stuff and took off. Even with the subway it took her almost half an hour to get there and now as she climbed the familiar staircase leading to her father's flat she felt horrible. She knew she was too busy with work most of the time, so immersed in it that she often forgot fundamental things such as eating lunch and taking a few minutes of a break and sometimes even going to the restroom.

But she tried her best to stay in regular touch with her father because she knew exactly just how hard he took her mom's death. Ever since Matt was born it was a habit of theirs to have dinner once in two weeks at the minimum so her father could be involved in his grandson's life and also so he and Kate could catch up.

She stopped in front of the door and didn't even bother to knock, she just entered. The smell of food instantly invaded her senses and made her mouth water as she quickly took her jacket and boots off. She heard laughter from the living room so she headed that way and stopped in the doorway when she spotter her son and her father on the carpet, playing some kind of a board game in which, judging by the wild grimaces that he made to make the little boy giggle, her father was currently losing.

"Mommy!" Came the delighted exclamation of Matt as soon as he noticed her. He jumped up from his sitting position on the ground and sprinted towards her, collapsing into her leg with full force. He hugged her tightly and Kate rested her hands lightly on his little shoulders, stroking them in greeting.

"Hey Matty!" she murmured with a soft smile once he let go of her. He beamed up at her then he returned to the carpet where his grandfather had also turned towards Kate. "I'm sorry for being late, dad. I got held up at work!" she explained a bit shyly but Jim just pursed his lips together in slight disapprovement and waved her over. The upturning corners of his mouth told her that he wasn't really angry with her.

"It's okay, Katie! Any time I get to spend with this young man is quality time. Highly precious for me." he said as she came closer then he pressed a kiss on Kate's cheek.

"Thanks for watching over him." she told him with a smile as she settled on the couch and looked at the game they were playing.

"My pleasure." Jim said seriously then sat back across Matt and put on a thoughtful face. "But now, if you excuse us, we have a serious match to finish!" he told her over his shoulder with a wink and Kate chuckled, leaning back into the cushions to sit more comfortably while watching them.

Half an hour later they were all sitting around Jim's small dining table with a plate of reheated food in front of Kate and glasses of orange juice and some crackers in front of the boys.

"So Katie, tell us about this case of yours..." Jim asked in the momentary silence after Matt recounted how his best friend fell off the slide at kindergarten. Kate swallowed the bite she was eating and poked her fork into another potato before she spoke.

"Well, it all started when the body of a woman was found in the back of a taxi cab. We found out she was a Greek immigrant living in the US for almost a decade now and that she got on perfectly with everyone until two weeks ago. Then, as her friends and colleagues told us, she started acting weird and she became a bit too high tempered..." she paused to chew another bite then continued. "We started to reach people she might have ehm, angered in these weeks but we came up with nothing useful. Then Lanie found some unusual substances in her system that made us thing she was using drugs. Her friends said she would never do such thing, but everything pointed to that. We tried to work out a timeline for her last days and we realized there were hours in her days when nobody knew where she was. So we tracked her phone and her credit card and we found out she was somewhere in the shady parts of the city, though we didn't know exactly where."

"Eat!" Jim interrupted her and Kate took another forkful of food into her mouth with a smirk.

"So then, we found a note in her online calendar which gave us a lead. That was what I was running down before I came here. She was meeting with someone in a bar two days before her death but the bartender couldn't remember the name of the man she met there. She gave me a pretty good description though…" she said, finishing off her story.

"Well, I hope you catch that son of a…khm, killer, soon!" her father said, changing his choice of words at the last moment.

"Me too." Kate nodded, putting her fork down as she ate the last of her meal.

"Matty, would you be so kind and go get that ice cream that you saw in the fridge earlier?" her father said and he reached out to grab her hand before Kate could stand up to put her plate into the sink. She shot him a confused look but he motioned with his eyes for her to sit back down so she did.

"Sure!" the boy exclaimed and he was out of his seat in a moment, sprinting towards the fridge. Kate looked at her father questioningly and Jim leaned over the table conspiratorially with a grin spreading on his face.

"What are you doin' tomorow?" he asked her and Kate raked her mind to figure out what he was implying.

"Why?" she asked back with furrowed eyebrows. She had a feeling she was missing something but she couldn't grasp what it was.

"Do you know what is tomorrow?" her dad asked suspiciously and she saw doubt flash in his eyes.

"What? Tuesday?" she asked back absent mindedly, still thinking of what it can be.

"Your son's birthday…" Jim muttered and Kate felt like dropping her head to the tabletop and hitting her forehead to the wood several times over and over again. Instead she tried to keep a straight face as she nodded.

"Yeah, I know…" she said, going for a confident tone but she could see that her father saw right through her lie.

"Right." He shook his head disappointedly. "So, do you have any plans?"

"Well, I'm working so he's going to be with a babysitter…" she shrugged, looking a little bit guilty.

"Which one? Katie, the boy has had so many nannies and babysitters he can't even keep their names in his head and he's only five."

"You know what my job's like..." she muttered.

"Yes but you are not only a detective but also a mother. And you need to decide where your priorities lie." he paused for a second then shook his head. "Though it seems to me you have already decided. And it's the wrong thing." he said and his words hurt Kate like a slap in the face.

But before she could say anything in response, Matt reentered the room, clutching a box of ice cream and thee spoons and beaming happily. And Kate's stomach sank.

So this was the first chapter. What do you think, guys? Did you like it? Well, I hope you did and I also hope you'll be nice enough to leave me a review! I'm dying to know your opinion! :)
Thank you all for reading and reviewing! It means a lot!
I'm crazy busy nowadays so I can't promise anything about the next update only that I will do my best to be quick about it!
So until then, xxx