Jake walks away from her on a still spring night, leaving her to a near future ripe with confusion and change and possibility, and comes back seventeen weeks later in a body bag.

. . .

Amy's out on a robbery investigation when it happens, chasing down leads in what turns out to be a rather fruitless enquiry into a jewellery store hold-up. When she returns to the precinct, empty-handed and frustrated, the bullpen is eerily deserted. It's just Gina, slumped lazily back in her desk chair, hair falling in her eyes as she fiddles with it.

Holt appears in the doorframe of his office, as though he's been waiting for her. "Santiago. In here."

She's actually half-expecting to just be admonished for her lack of progress in solving the case, but Gina glances up at her silently as she passes, the hair parting from her face to reveal red-rimmed eyes, and it's then that Amy just knows – knows somewhere deep down like a punch in the gut what's about to happen – because things are not okay if everyone's gone and Gina's not saying anything.

Something bad went down.

Terry's occupying one of the chairs in front of the Captain's desk, his face an exhausted mask of concern, and she sinks into the other.

"Detective Santiago," Holt starts, and for the first time she can't stand the measured timbre of his voice, because he's about to shatter her world in the same tenor he uses to talk about soup. "About two hours ago—"

"Is this about my robbery case, Captain? Because I know it didn't get off to the best start but I really feel like I can get it back on track."

"Santiago, we got the news that—"

"Because there are still a couple of avenues that I can follow because we should really get this guy because jewellery stores are the backbone of the economy and I will work super hard tomorrow at it, Sir, I swear" she babbles, needing to keep talking, because if she keeps interrupting him he can't tell her the news that she really, really doesn't want to hear.

"Amy—"

"Don't," she says quietly. "Just… don't say it. Please."

He looks at her with sympathetic eyes but keeps murmuring in his soft but no-nonsense tone, sayings things like "line of duty" and "explosion" and "multiple arrests"; all she hears is him, apologising for the inconvenient urgency of his romantic-stylez feelings.

Terry covers her hand with his large one.

Something bad went down.

. . .

He gets a proper police funeral, at least; Holt sees to that, once the details of his undercover assignment are allowed to come to light. There's a flyover and a casket watch and his number is retired, and their badges and squad cars are draped in black.

It's the lone rainy day in a summer of blazing heat, and the grey sky opens up on the large group as they gather in an organized huddle in Salem Fields. At the centre, Holt and Gina flank Jake's mother, a formidable-looking woman who stares stoically at her son's casket, and accepts the folded flag and words of condolence with a stiff nod.

Hundreds of uniformed officers fill the cemetery, neat lines of navy blue radiating out over the gentle hills. Amy stands with Rosa, sheltering from the drizzle under a large black umbrella, and the taller woman mutely grips Amy's elbow as she cries.

The gun salute echoes around the silent grounds, and suddenly it's over.

He'd have eaten up all this pomp and circumstance on his behalf, she thinks, and then, a realization that hits her with unexpected force, Jake's really going to hate being dead.

. . .

Jake's mother comes to see her a few days after the funeral. She looks worn, so much smaller now, and a fiery spark of guilt ignites in Amy. For being the surviving partner. For not being able to back him up.

For her own mother and her seven healthy sons.

"Detec- Amy. Jake left me a list once, of things to do in… if this happened. He wanted you to have this."

The woman holds out an envelope and a stuffed bear with a brown ribbon bow, its zippered back sagging slightly where a recording device has been removed.

Amy wants to tell her so many things about the son she raised, but the words stick in her throat. She manages a mumble of thanks as she takes the items, wishing she had something more to offer.

Collapsing down onto her couch, she extracts a piece of paper from the slightly crumpled envelope and unfolds it, recognizing the letter of recommendation he wrote her for Major Crimes.

… Amy Santiago has been my partner for three years… an excellent detective… lucky to have her as a colleague, and even luckier to have her as a friend…

She swallows hard and tosses the letter onto the coffee table for another day, overwhelmed by his presence and absence.

Later that night she hugs Fuzzy Cuddle Bear to her in bed, muffling her hiccupping sobs into the bear's soft fur, and hates him a little bit. Hates him for always jumping headfirst eyes-closed into opportunities. Hates him for the audacity of his feelings, for opening up doors that she'll never get to close. Hates him for being so loud and energetic and lively that there's so much of him now to miss.

Mostly, she just hates him for being gone, and for leaving her to carry this weight of whatever was between them alone.

. . .

She finds herself placed on administrative leave on account of being his partner. At a loss for anything else to do, she goes back to stay with her parents for a while; curls up on her childhood bed and tries to let her mother's endless supply of casserole and worrying do its job.

"You don't have to be strong right now, mija," her mother tells her late one night when she finds Amy nestled in the porch swing, unable to sleep and trying to hide her tears from her family.

"It's stupid," Amy whispers, burrowing into her mother's side. "He wasn't even… it shouldn't be this hard."

"He was your partner, and your friend, and he meant a lot to you. Sometimes you don't need to unravel the rest of it. Just give it time."

Amy nods, and doesn't mention that sometimes in the still of the night, she hears the words champagne, mountain range, hugs faintly swirling around her in the dark.

"I don't want him to be dead," she says instead.

Her mother hugs her closer and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "I know, mija. I know."

She never shakes the feeling that she should be so much better at dealing with this.

When she gets back to Brooklyn, she rearranges her apartment twice and buys a load of groceries that are ultimately left to rot in her fridge.

Gina comes over some days, barging her way through the door with her unicorn blanket and nail polish in hand, and they watch Oprah together in a companionship that's almost comfortable. Amy never imagined being this grateful for the other woman's presence, but it dawns on her, as her nails are being painted fluorescent orange and she's learning – only somewhat consentingly – the lurid details of Gina's high school career, that it's really for both their benefit. Gina doesn't know how to miss him either.

(She wonders if Jake ever told Gina anything about his feelings, or if, in her strange office-gossip-mystic way, she'd figured it out anyway.)

She goes back to work five days early. She knows she won't find him there, but he's not here, either.

. . .

It still amazes her a little bit when life goes on. It's not back to normal, exactly – it never really could be – but the days turn into weeks and months and time passes because that's what it's meant to do.

She sees the department counsellor once a week; it's mandated, but she goes willingly. Selfishly, she likes having someone to talk to who didn't also know him, someone whose own style of mourning she doesn't have to accommodate.

"I keep wondering where he went," she admits during one session, fiddling with a thread that's come loose from one of her buttonholes.

"He died, Amy," the counsellor says, gently but firmly.

"I know that," she huffs, and she does. "But he had to go somewhere, right?"

The idea of him just disappearing – all that vitality and spark and life and Jake-ness becoming nothing all at once – is something she still can't reconcile. Amy was raised Catholic, still believes to a degree, but she can't picture Jake in her heaven and she doesn't know where else to put him.

"I dream about, you know, that night. How it could have gone differently. What it would be like if he was still here," she confesses the next time.

"That's normal."

"Is it?"

"There's no limit on normal for these things, Amy," the counsellor tells her, and she thinks, so when does it end?

There's a new guy sitting at Jake's desk. He's young and eager, a transfer from the 64th, but he knows about his predecessor. In another life, he would have been a perfect fit for their team, probably even a friend. In this one, he gets the job done quietly, and pretends not to notice the occasional hitch in Amy's breath that comes when she looks up and expects, just for a moment, to see a different pair of brown eyes mocking her.

The photo from when the two of them bested The Vulture still hangs on the wall; the last person who tried to move it found Rosa's fist uncomfortably close to their face.

. . .

On Jake's birthday, the team heads to Shaw's. They sit around a table and reminisce, swapping stories and memories in a vigil that's surprisingly light-hearted.

In line for the bathroom, a young woman is giggling tipsily as she tries to hold her drink and text at the same time, beer sloshing rhythmically onto the floor. "I can do it sooooo much better with both hands," she informs the line at large.

"Title of your sex tape," Amy mutters automatically to herself, and then freezes, waiting for her insides to ache in that twisty way they do when she thinks about him. But they don't, there's only the briefest pang in her heart, and it's like a switch has been flipped somewhere inside of her. She can do this. This is how she'll keep him, with his terrible jokes and his ridiculously wide smile.

Gina stays over after the night winds down – "I can just feel him in the apartment sometimes, you know? It's like the massage chairs are haunting me," – and they drink wine and watch Die Hard and toast to not trying to forget him.

The next afternoon, they go to his grave. It's the first time Amy's been back since the funeral, and she grips her coat more tightly around her as she gazes down at the headstone, dappled in the fading sunlight. She'll never get to know if anything could have happened between them, but she got Thanksgiving suits and drunken texts and one pretty solid entry on the good date list, and maybe that's enough. She can hold onto that.

She places a smooth stone on the top of the marker, a little pineapple drawn on it in Sharpie; kisses her fingers and presses them to the cold granite with a small smile.

"Bye, Jake."

She's gonna be okay.

. . .

One blustery winter's night, there's a knock at her door.

She's curled up on her couch, wearing a NYPD sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants, partially paying attention to a Seinfeld marathon. She assumes it's her elderly neighbour, who's taken to checking in on her by wandering over on the pretence of borrowing some food item or other, despite knowing all too well Amy's ineptitude in kitchen matters. The approaching holiday season has only increased the frequency of these visits.

"I'm fine, Margaret!" she yells as she heaves herself off the sofa and unbolts the door.

And she must be hallucinating. She must have dozed off to the sound of Elaine's neuroses and now she's dreaming, because he's standing there in front of her, hoodie and leather jacket and all, whole and healthy and breathing.

For a fraction of a second, the earth stops moving.

Then she remembers, like she does every time, that she's had this dream before. So she just stands there dumbly, waiting for her mind to snap back and wake her up and remind her of what's real. Something bad went down. Jake died. It's five months later and nine months since you saw him last and Jake died. She rubs at her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands and opens them again.

He's still there, framed in the doorway, and the mix of apprehension and relief on his face is one that dream-Jake's never worn.

"Hey, Amy."

"You're dead," she informs him, in case he's a ghost and he really doesn't know yet. "There was a funeral and your mom gave me a bear and I have cried for months and… you're dead."

"Awww, you cried? That's so sweet."

It's the tipping point, because with dream-Jake she'd managed to misplace a good 95% of his smugness. Her fists lash out to strike at his chest and her eyes are blurry and stinging and it crosses her mind that ghosts can't take corporeal form and so he's alive. He's alive.

"What the fuck, you asshole!?"

He doesn't say anything, just lets her punch him with increasingly deflating blows that draw her closer to him, until his arms are tentatively encircling her. It registers somewhere in the back of the mind that this is the first time they'd ever hugged, that she was supposed to go her whole life without knowing what this felt like.

"How is this happening, exactly?" she thinks to ask after a long moment.

"My cover was super close to being blown. Clarke thought it would be safer for everyone if I died, at least until they could use the information I'd already gotten."

"Who knew?"

"Just the FBI team, and my mom. They didn't want to risk anyone else knowing, you know, for safety."

"Where'd you go?" It's the question she's wanted to ask him for months, but she never thought there'd actually be a real answer. I keep wondering where he went. He died, Amy. But he had to go somewhere, right?

"To a safe house on Long Island," he says with a choking laugh. "I watched a lot of television. Read 42 books now, and I can play chess for real."

"How long have you been… back?"

He extracts one arm from his careful grip on her to check his watch. "Since… twenty-seven minutes ago. I got word that the final arrests had been made, packed my stuff, called my mom, and came here."

She knows she's interrogating him, but she's got a very tenuous grasp on her sanity right now and interrogation, she can do. "You just… came here? What about the precinct?"

"Clarke is filling the Captain in, I'll go meet him tomorrow. It turns out there's, like, a ton of paperwork involved in coming back from the not-dead. But I just wanted… I had to see you first."

The earnest, pleading look on his face breaks her, and she collapses against his chest, his arms holding her more tightly as she breathes deeply, shakily, and tries to figure out what the hell is going to happen now.

"I wanted to tell you," he says into her hair, so quietly that she almost doesn't hear it. "I thought about calling you every day, but I couldn't, and I thought that maybe— wait, did you really cry for months?"

She pushes him away and wipes her eyes with her sleeve, a flush of rage burning through her. "No, Jake, I took the news extremely well and haven't been happier since."

"Amy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for…"

"You were dead, Jake. You told me you had feelings for me – which is a completely shitty and unfair way to say goodbye to somebody, just so you know – and then you left for four months and then you died. What, did you think I'd say "well, that's what happens!" and just get over it?"

He looks taken aback, and she realizes that he really hadn't expected her to be so affected by the whole ordeal, because he walked away that night before she had a chance to respond. But she's nine months past the point of being dishonest or vague about her feelings, and he's alive, and he needs to hear it. Needs to know.

"I missed you so much, butthead," she says, pulling him by the wrist back towards her and letting his flannel soak up the words.

He wraps his arms around her again, one hand holding firm across her back and the other cradling her head.

"I missed you so much, too."

. . .

Gina throws herself at him when they're reunited at the precinct the next morning, her cynicism swallowed up in an unbridled sea of babble about heart-eyes emojis. Rosa smiles and grasps his shoulder for a long moment. Charles cries.

Amy stands back and takes it all in, still processing this new axis of their worlds. Fifteen hours ago, he'd been dead and she'd been coping. Now, as she watches him high-five Scully and Hitchcock with Gina still clinging to him, she wonders if all the therapy and teddy bears and time in the world could ever have really helped her be okay with a life without Jake Peralta in it.

Her eyes meet his and he grins at her over the top of Gina's head, an expression so genuinely adoring that it makes her stomach clench up. This is real, she thinks. This is happening.

He turns up at her door that night as well, holding bags of Chinese food and a Walker: Texas Ranger boxset, and never leaves.

. . .

She still jolts awake at night sometimes, her sleep-muddled mind unable to immediately distinguish reality from fiction from dream. But then there's the weight of him behind her, the sound of his breathing, the arm heavy around her waist; the list of things she mentally ticks off to anchor herself to the present.

Jake was dead (and now he's not).

Jake left (and then he came back).

Jake's alive (and he's in her bed, and he loves her, and none of that is going to change).

Amy rolls over so that she can hear his heart beat, and counts down through her checklist as she drifts back to sleep.

x x x

SO MANY NOTES:

+ I attempted to research police funeral proceedings – still can't figure out which, if any, honours & traditions Jake would have received what with the whole fired/undercover deal, but I decided to give him the whole lot, so there you go.

+ For my own purposes I'm putting Jake's birthday around late November, since I don't remember it being mentioned otherwise.

+ I'm super wary of this being overly melodramatic or OOC for Amy, but y'know, grief is messy and erratic and unpredictable. Also angst is fun. So please let me know if it felt realistic.

+ Also please let me know if you liked the ending or thought it was a cop-out. Fake-dead was always my plan but somewhere along the way I got super invested in writing the real-dead scenes and the balance shifted.

+ I'll shut up now.