So this is my post Always fic. It will be eight chapters long, with each chapter focusing on a different character. Not all of them will have been seen in "Always" but they are still crucial to the storytelling. I plan to keep the updates close together as long as the muse keeps coming out to play.

Thanks to the wonderful Tadpole24 for her beta skills and for encouraging me to add more, I hope the few sentences that I added are to your enjoyment.

Eight in the Night.

One: Gates.

The precinct is quiet, only the night shift remains.

The main four left long ago.

The one who isn't the cop hasn't been seen today.

The one who was described in her predecessors notes as the best he'd ever trained – bar none – has handed in her resignation.

The one who she suspended is gone too. She wonders if he will come back tomorrow. He wasn't apologetic for his actions, but then she never expected him to be.

Then there is the one who came to her for help. Who came to her because he had no other choice. Who came and told her where they had gone and who they were after.

He was the one who threw his arm over the side of the building – with no regard for his own safety.

She watched the interaction between his partner and himself. She watched him as he slumped into his chair.

She wanted to tell him that he'd done the right thing. To tell him that his friends were alive because of him. To tell him that it is better for them to be furious with him than to have him crying over a coffin.

He left eventually. He didn't push in his chair. He normally does. She had to leave her office and push it in for him. It didn't seem right with it out. And then she came back in here.

Her pen hovers over the paperwork that would send her two officers to administrative duties. She signs her name. She has to be seen to uphold the law. She cannot have officers running around on their own crusades, not thinking about the consequences.

That is not the type of precinct she will be responsible for.

Her former colleagues warned her about taking this job. To replace a beloved captain is always difficult. But to replace one killed in the line of duty is even more so.

She saw their faces after they'd returned from his home. All of them remain loyal to him and she's never going to break that loyalty. But then, perhaps she doesn't want to.

There's a strength in loyalty, especially in the job that they all do.

There is another form she needs to sign to make the other move from administrative to resignation.

But she doesn't sign that one. She shows her own form of loyalty.

She leaves the unsigned form on her desk.

Switches off the light.

Closes the door.

She smiles at the uniform that bids her a goodnight.

The elevator doors slide open and she steps inside.

She leans back against the wall. They've been hiding something from her, from the moment she arrived here.

One day, she hopes they'll trust her enough to tell her what is behind their secret looks and borrowed paperwork.

But for now, she's going home.

So there we have Gates, anyone have any guesses about the other seven to come?