Summary: Brenda is overwhelmed with emotions when she is confronted with a memory from her past that she had thought was long since forgotten.

Pairing: Brenda Leigh Johnson/Sharon Raydor (non-romantic)

Rating: K+

Timeline: Chapter 2 connects to the Season 5 episode "Dead Man's Hand" from The Closer (5x15)

Note: This is the first of our "double ups", stories created by throwing two random prompts together. There will be more like this one soon!

Prompt II: Poison

There weren't many times where a case left Brenda with a bitter taste in her mouth but there was something about the aftermath of the Ally Moore case that made her feel uncomfortable. Partly it was the realisation that she had indeed not worked as hard in the early stages of the case as perhaps she ought to have but secondly, and more disturbingly, Brenda was angry at herself for not having seen through Ally's charade sooner.

Most surprising of all was the responsibility she felt towards Sharon Raydor. Ally had manipulated her superior perfectly, had played her like a fiddle, and had betrayed all the trust and confidence Raydor had in her for her own gain. Standing across from the Captain in the morgue as they reassembled the two guns in perfect unison, Brenda had caught a glimpse of something behind the brunette's usually cool demeanour and what she saw had startled her.

Now the day was almost over and Brenda reflected on the events. There was something about that brief and unguarded moment with Sharon in the morgue that wouldn't leave her alone. Every time she closed her eyes she saw it again; like some kind of a distant flash back.

The soft knock against her office door made her look up. Captain Raydor stood in the doorway, clutching a file. There was a hint of disdain in her voice when she said, "You are not going to believe why Ally Moore wanted to kill her husband."

"You mean there's a better reason than the affair she was having with Sargent Dunn?" Brenda asked as she removed her reading glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"That all depends on how you feel about real estate," Raydor answered and walked up to the chair across from Brenda's desk. She handed the file to Brenda as she sat down, crossing her legs. "Ally and Shawn Moore had an interest only loan on their house that was about to reset and they were going to lose their home. Unless…."

"Unless one of them died and the mortgage insurance kicked in," Brenda finished Sharon's sentence. Her brown eyes were fixed on the older woman and she searched for whatever it was she had seen earlier in the morgue. If Sharon Raydor wore some kind of a mask that shielded something deeper, she had put it firmly back in place.

"Well, it's awfully hard to refinance these days," Brenda added dryly and picked up the file, put her glasses back on and studied the information in front of her. She heard Raydor suck in a breath but the words she heard were not the ones she expected. She looked back up, removing her glasses once again.

"I would also like to say that I'm fully aware that at the beginning of this investigation I was a total bitch."

Brenda opened her mouth to answer but struggled to form a coherent sentence. "Uh… I'd say it was more in the middle… And near the end."

Was this really happening? Was she actually having this conversation with Sharon goddamn Raydor?

"But I still believe that if you had talked to the husband earlier that he might…"

"He might still be alive." That was the second time in as many minutes that Brenda finished Sharon's sentence. And she couldn't deny that the Captain was right. She averted her eyes because Sharon's intense gaze suddenly felt a little too strong. "Yes, I've thought about that. And about how I might have resisted talking to him because…."

"Because I suggested it." This time Sharon finished Brenda's sentence.

It almost physically hurt to admit it and Brenda made a casual hand gesture. "It's possible." She folded her hands and leaned in a little. "But I did wanna say that I think it might be beneficial for the LAPD if we…"

Their words got lost then. Sharon told Brenda that she should do what she said and Brenda said that they needed to work together better.

And then Brenda laughed. And to her surprise, Sharon laughed too, albeit a little shallow. But the sound of their laughter mixed together was strangely…. Familiar.

Sharon fingered a strand of dark hair around her finger. Just for a moment and then she seemed to realise what she was doing and she quickly dropped her hand back in her lap. The seconds of silence in which what had just happened sunk in seemed to last longer than either of them realised and when Brenda looked back up, she was struck by the almost awkward expression on Sharon's face. She looked a little nervous and then, in the length of just a single heartbeat, Brenda saw her.

The young woman standing in the diner doorway, a sleeping boy on her hip and a frightened little girl holding her hand. Green eyes that looked around the crowded tables in search of a friendly face and she'd been about to turn around, fade back into world from which she had emerged, before seeing the blonde curly haired girl in the back of the restaurant stand up.

Brenda saw her now, twenty years later. Those same green eyes had hardened, and Sharon's face bore a few more lines, but she was right here, in front of her, and only now did she see it. She had thought about her from time to time, always wondering what had happened to her. Sometimes she would swear she saw her face in a crowd somewhere but when she turned to look, it was never her.

And yet she had been here all along.

Then Sharon spoke, clearly oblivious to Brenda's realisation. "The thing is…."

"We just don't like each other." It slipped out before Brenda even fully realised what she was saying. Her mind was spinning and she fought to hold on to the poker face she had been wearing throughout all of this.

Brenda spoke on autopilot, agreed with whatever Sharon said, but whenever she looked at her, she didn't see the woman in the grey suit but the woman wearing the worn out jeans and button down white cotton shirt, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. What a far cry she was from the woman sitting across from her right now and Brenda struggled to even believe it was the same person. But in her heart she knew.

Sharon Raydor, the woman she hated more than anyone else in the entire building, was the woman she had watched cry quietly in her motel room. She had seen the tears, had honoured Sharon's request to stay with her and not leave her alone. She had watched her sleep, her face lit up by the faint glow of sunlight falling through the window. It was in that light where Brenda felt she got to see something other people probably rarely saw; Sharon's face void of a mask. She had watched her sleep for longer than she ought to have done but she'd been unable to take her eyes off her.

It was Sharon who stood up and said goodnight first and Brenda said goodnight in return, turned away when Sharon was about to leave her office. But as she heard the Captain's heels fade out into the Murder Room, Brenda suddenly rose to her feet and almost ran out after her. Provenza, who was still at his desk, shot her a puzzled look as she sprinted past his desk and Brenda caught up with Sharon by the elevators.

"Captain?" she called, causing the older woman to turn around. She stopped maybe four or five steps away from Sharon, panting slightly. Her heart thundered in her chest and the blood rushed through her ears. "Wait."

Sharon arched an eyebrow in surprise. She seemed guarded and unsure of why Brenda had followed her out here. "Chief?"

Brenda's throat was dry and the words came out in between shallow breaths. She didn't know why she struggled to speak so much. "My Mama told me to be kind to strangers and reach out a helping hand." She repeated the words from the note she had left twenty years ago word for word. Even with the distance between her and Sharon, she could see the other woman's eyes soften.

"Stay safe," Sharon repeated the next two words from the note and she smiled. It was a sad smile, the kind of smile that carried a memory. "I wondered how long it would take you to remember."

Brenda blinked, stunned. "You knew?"

"Oh, I knew," Sharon admitted. Her voice was softer than Brenda had ever heard it. Gone was the stoic mask she had observed earlier and she got to see a glimpse of the woman behind it. "I knew the moment I saw you in that hospital corridor." She shrugged, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She didn't make eye contact and chose to stare at the floor instead. "There aren't that many Brenda Leigh's in Los Angeles that speak with a Southern accent, you know."

Brenda took a hesitant step in Sharon's direction but was careful not to come too close. "Why didn't you say anythin'?"

"Would you have said anything if you were me?" Sharon asked. "Imagine walking into a hospital corridor and seeing a face from your past, a past you tried to get away from for so long." She pushed her hands into the pockets of her blazer. "I saw you and all I remembered was the morning you watched me and my children in one of the most vulnerable moments of our lives."

She didn't have to say it out loud. Brenda knew what she meant. She had seen Sharon cry, had seen her close to falling apart.

"You were afraid I was goin' to use it against you." The back of Brenda's throat suddenly felt like she'd swallowed a handful of glass and she was actually surprised she didn't feel offended or insulted.

She looked at Sharon. This was the woman whom she could easily have used for target practice at the firing range any day of the week, the woman she complained to Fritz about whenever their paths crossed. A woman who, on more than one occasion, had left her blood boiling.

And yet she was the same woman who had slept in Brenda's bed twenty years ago; the same woman who had found safety and shelter with a stranger and had dared to trust someone she had never met before. The woman who had clearly been running from something and had been desperate to start over. How was it possible she felt so differently about her now than she had done back then? Had the hatred poisoned her that much? Had she ever even stopped to think about the other side of Sharon, the human side? She'd only ever focused on the woman she saw at work and she had forgotten that, just like her, Sharon went home at night to a whole different life.

"I…I should go," Sharon stammered when the elevator doors opened. She tore her eyes away from Brenda and before the blonde had a chance to say anything else, the doors had closed again and Sharon was gone.

Brenda continued to stare at the spot where Sharon had stood long after the other woman had disappeared. When she finally regained some kind of composure, she went back to her office to collect her purse and muttered a quiet goodbye to Provenza.

She fled out of the building and out into the warm Los Angeles night, her lungs eagerly expanding as she took in large gulps of fresh air.

Brenda found her way back to her car, got behind the wheel and started the engine. She drove home on autopilot and sat in the driveway for twenty minutes, her hands still on the wheel but with the engine switched off. She stared at the front door. The house was dark. Fritz had gone to bed. The little green neon lights on the dashboard showed10. 21 pm. She had been at work all day and all night and now coming home felt like the wrong things to do.

Sharon Raydor was Sharon. The Sharon. How had she not known? How was it even possible that the head of FID, the woman she had come to loathe more than any other person in this entire world, was the same woman she had met in that diner twenty years ago? The same woman she had watched cry herself to sleep in her bed.

Without realising what she was doing, Brenda turned the key again and the engine roared back to life. She reversed off the drive and, after making a phone call she didn't think she' d ever make, she wrote down Sharon's address on the back of her hand with a pen she found in her purse and drove off into the night.

~()~

Sharon lived in a condo about half an hour from Brenda's duplex and after flashing her badge at the doorman downstairs, the man let her in. She rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor and quietly walked down the corridor before reaching Sharon's door. Brenda's heart pounded in her chest as she knocked and with baited breath she waited. Moments later she heard the sound of a chain being moved and then the door opened.

Sharon was backlit by the yellow light coming from the hallway and she had her arms folded across her chest and an almost unreadable expression on her face. She leaned a little against the doorframe and the hint of a smile spread across her lips when she saw Brenda standing on her doorstep. She was momentarily struck by just how little the other woman had changed. The same crazy blonde curls, the same dark brown eyes. It was as if no time had passed at all.

The moment she had first laid eyes on Brenda several weeks ago on that fateful night in the middle of a hospital corridor, Sharon had recognised her immediately. The sane southern drawl, the same face, just twenty years later. It had startled her more than it had frightened her but in that moment she had looked for the teenager who had sat next to her on the bed but instead had found a strong, stubborn woman who had not been prepared to give Sharon so much as an inch.

Right in that moment, Sharon's defences had gone up. Because Brenda knew something about her and she couldn't afford to let that vulnerability be used. She didn't know if Brenda recognised her too but she hadn't been prepared to wait and find out. She had come too far and had worked too hard for anyone to use her past against her. But as the days went on and she spent more time with her, it had become clear that Brenda didn't recognise her at all and Sharon had dared to let her guard down just a little.

There were moments where she had considered asking Brenda if she really didn't remember but whenever those thoughts crossed her mind, the blonde Chief pulled some kind of a stunt that left Sharon reeling and she always ended up not saying anything. Until today, when Brenda had finally remembered.

Brenda stared at Sharon, her mind trapped in what felt like some strange alternate universe where she and Sharon were completely different people. She couldn't ignore the fact that once, they had been different people indeed and they had known each other. And now... Now they were nothing. Had she become so overwhelmed by her initial dislike for the woman that she had completely failed to see her as anything other than Captain Raydor? How was it possible she had felt such loathing for her right up until the moment she remembered who Sharon was? Would she have remembered sooner if she hadn't been so focused on hating Sharon?

"Chief Johnson, are you going to stand and stare at me all night?" Sharon asked.

Hi," Brenda shyly said when Sharon's voice snapped her out of her thoughts. Suddenly coming here felt like the most ridiculous idea ever. She was blushing and fiddled with a button on her blazer.

Sharon's green eyes lit up. "Hey." She smiled. "I was kind of expecting you."

"Really?" Brenda questioned and Sharon nodded.

They looked at each other and it was as if they were seeing each other for the very first time. The air was loaded, thick with unanswered questions. Their gazes locked. They were in the same place, only a few steps away from each other, and yet it felt like they were worlds apart.

Brenda had to ask. She had to know. She couldn't keep wondering if somehow Sharon had managed to walk these corridors every day, knowing Brenda was just two floors below her. "How did you do it? How did you look at me and remember?"

"How did you not?" Sharon asked softly.

Seeing Brenda that night in the hospital had ripped open something she thought she'd left behind. A different life, one she didn't want to think about but couldn't deny. She had been a different person then and she had long since walked away from the shadows that had haunted her.

"I'm sorry, Brenda."

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" The blonde knitted her eyebrows together.

Sharon averted her eyes. "For never thanking you for what you did back then."

"You're here," Brenda pointed out. "You seem to be doing well." She clumsily moved from one foot onto the other and then she smiled. The image of the sleeping boy and the girl wanting waffles flashed through her mind. "How are your children? Emily and Ricky, right?"

"They're doing well," Sharon answered and Brenda could hear the pride in her voice. "Ricky recently moved to San Francisco to work in IT and Emily lives in New York. She's a dancer, a ballerina." Her grip on the doorknob loosened a little and she hesitantly took a step aside. "Do you want to come in?" Green eyes found brown. "There is a lot to talk about."

"Yes," Brenda answered as she stepped over the threshold into Sharon's condo. "Yes, I suppose there is."

The door closed behind her and in the middle of that hallway the two women saw each other in a completely different light. Then Sharon slowly extended her hand. Brenda accepted it.

"My name is Sharon," the brunette said, the hint of a smile playing across her lips.

Brenda smiled too. "My name is Brenda." A moment's silence followed and then she added, "It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too."