By greyeyedgirl
A/N: This is a Cristina and Burke story. It ignores everything that happened in the last few minutes of "17 Seconds." Burke isn't the one who got shot. The plotline was thought up by bebec, and was requested by her. This story is dedicated to bebec. I hope you like it.
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If you ask a child, almost any child, in the world, to list something scary, their list will go on and on. "Mon-stures." "Ghosts!" "No, witches!" But among the list of goblins and demons, vampires and zombies, there is one never-changing detail, one item that will show up on every toddler's list…the setting is the same, of all of their fears. Children are afraid of the dark.
Darkness, it seems, is no more than an absence of light. However, there are so many things human beings need the light for. It not only brings us sight but it brings us warmth, comfort. Standing against the wall in a lighted room, you have no surprises.
"Thank you," Preston Burke said, handing his cab fare to the taxi driver. The man nodded, looking grateful for the tip, and Burke closed the door, heading into the hospital.
Inside of the hospital, a man stalked along the corridors, looking inconspicuous just in the fact that he looked like Hell. In hospitals it is come to be expected that people don't look their best, whether it was from the blaze of the fluorescent lights shining directly on their faces, or the stress and pain of watching a loved one suffer, or being the one feeling the suffering.
This man, though, looked like Hell for several reasons, none of which have been listed thus far. It wouldn't be the burden of a guilty conscious, as might be one's first guess, but the anger of being betrayed, of being hurt, and even most predominantly of not wanting to get caught trying to perform his task.
There was a woman going into a door just ahead, looking thoroughly annoyed about something and not paying him the least bit of attention. Walking towards the door, Petey stopped, reading the small engraving on the wall next to the entrance. An on-call room.
Cristina slammed the door to the on-call room, not taking any notice of the young man occupying the hallway. She'd had a long day, and even though she knew there were patients to attend to on the floor below her, she just needed two minutes to be by herself. Watching her patient forgive her fiancé had threw her, and she didn't like it. Bitter, they had called her. Well, so what if she was! Didn't she have a reason to be? Didn't she—
She exhaled loudly, turning on the light and sitting on the bottom bunk of the bed, not trusting herself to lie down. She stared at the wall for a moment, thinking, when the door swung open.
Cristina jumped, looking up at the man from the hallway in slight confusion. He did not look fearful or sorry but full of anger, and Cristina instinctively knew to jump up from the bed and take a step back. She felt her heartbeat stop when he pulled the gun from the pocket of his jacket, holding it up directly in front of him. Her sight seemed to fade away, for everything went black, she got a glimpse of Burke's face, and then pain erupted through her entire right shoulder.