This will not be the last of my post-100th-episode writing, I'm fairly certain. This might not even stay a oneshot, for all I know right now. To everyone waiting for another chapter of What Brings Them Together... sorry, but don't expect one anytime soon. Life happened, and then this little distraction.

She stood, a lone figure, on a bridge with the wind and the rain tumbling around her. Her hair whipped out behind her, and tears traced sideways across her face, their trajectories changed by the force of the weather that was warring with them.

She was not there to jump. She was not suicidal.

She was there to think, and be alone, and not have to worry about the world.

And yet, that was all she could do... worry about the world. Her world.

Nothing was the same, nothing at all. She was shattered, broken... pieces of her scattered across the world. There was a large helpless bit trapped in a dark closet of an old brick house... another that had lodged itself in the confines of a pit filled with death... yet more which had gathered across the rooms of her lonely apartment, filling every corner of it and yet leaving her still lost and confused. None of it kept her company. Most of her, though, clung like a shadow behind him, adding dark contours to the edges of his form. Most of her was with him, as every memory that now traced its way across her grief-stricken mind was of the two of them.

That was her world.

Them.

But she had known... known from the very start, that they couldn't be anything more. She had wanted it, and that had been what scared her the most. Wanting to be with him... wanting him to love her. Wanting to understand how to love him back. And yet, that feeling inside of her, the way that he made her warm and complete... the way he took away the loneliness... she couldn't classify it. It might have been love. It might have been everything that she'd been told about. She just didn't know... and she needed him to tell her.

But she couldn't ask that of him, because she didn't deserve the answer.

He loved her.

It was a fact that she was well-aware of. A fact she had been afraid of for years... had denied ruthlessly in a last-ditch attempt to pretend it wasn't true. Because if it was, then something might happen one day.

And now it had.

And she had done what she had always known she would.

What else could she have said? What could she have done to make it all go away, and make things stay exactly as they were? She had known... all along... that things couldn't work out. For her, they never did.

She hated psychology, but this wasn't quite on that plane. This was from years of research, of experiments... and they all concluded exactly the same thing. She was broken beyond repair. She told him, told everyone, of the high failure rate in relationships... but she saw the successes, even the small ones. They haunted her, everyday. She would watch a couple walking down the street, hand in hand, and linger, wondering what that must feel like. To not be afraid, to just live in the moment... she'd tried it before, long ago, and she had been destroyed by it. She had been left completely alone, heartbroken, wondering what she had done wrong.

Only, she hadn't done anything wrong. The wrong was simply who she was. And she was incapable of love.

They all said it... all of them.

"You're completely incapable of human emotion, aren't you?"

"You disgust me."

"You're just a filthy whore."

"You're emotionally cold and distant."

"Get a soul!"

A fresh wave of tears rolled over her.

"I gotta move on. I gotta find someone who's gunna love me... in thirty years, or forty, or fifty..."

A broken sob found its way out of her, and she gripped the railing tightly, her knuckles turning white as she held on to the only thing she could, the only lifeline she had available.

All because it couldn't be him anymore.

That was over.

"Can we still work together?"

The pause was enough of an answer. Enough to tell her that he didn't want to. That he didn't think he could. "Yeah," he said at last, looking away from her and up to the starry heavens.

Now she knew that they couldn't do even that. Because Sweets had been right... they'd had their moment. It had been almost six years ago. They'd had it... and it had gone by. And the last five years had simply been an attempt. A failed, floundering attempt at something that they could never have, because it hadn't been there to begin with.

And it was all because of her.

He had wanted to spend thirty, forty... fifty years with her. He had wanted her. He had loved her. That feeling... she'd gotten used to it. She'd gotten used to seeing the warmth in his eyes, the glow of his smile, and hearing the smoothness of his voice, and she shouldn't have. She had been selfish. She had hurt him.

How could she be expected to be what he needed, when all she did was destroy everything around her? How could she try for this, when all it would do was lead to more heartbreak for the both of them?

She was damaged. She didn't deserve him, didn't deserve anyone.

He knew this... he'd said so, although not in so many words. He had agreed, had nodded and looked away... had known that she couldn't change. Couldn't be the person he needed. And that? That was what tore her soul apart in more ways that she'd thought possible. Because it was one thing to know that she was broken, that she would only hurt him. It was another entirely for him to accept it as well, to tell her she was right... to tell her that she wasn't the one after all. That he was going to move on, without her.

That was what she deserved, though. A life alone, isolated, where she couldn't hurt anyone. He would... he would find a woman to love him, and he would have a family, and kids... things that she could never give him.

They were through. It didn't matter that he'd said they could still work together... they couldn't. He would never move on if she was still in the picture, because he would feel guilty. He would always be that man. And she couldn't do that to him any longer.

Happiness couldn't come from her.

And suddenly, all she could see were the days and the late nights, the cases, the smiles, the laughter, the singing, the hugs, the reassurances, the soft little comments that meant so much more, Jasper, Brainy Smurf, argument after argument where they tested each other, where she felt so much more alive... and she felt his warm arms around her as she let her pain overflow, from her mother's murder, from her fear of losing her brother, from one of her early realizations that she simply couldn't have a relationship that was meant to work... she could smell Thai food, and hear a knock at her door as the clock showed midnight... she could feel the clink of his glass against hers as they toasted success, as they shared ideas, as they relaxed on a weekend. She could picture her kitchen counter, with the two of them seated on opposite sides, laughing about nothing in particular. She could see his face, shining with relief as they lay in the sand in an old quarry, covered in dirt and rubble... she could see the look of pride in his eyes as she talked to a suspect, as she got the information they needed, as she held up the evidence on a piece of bone and pointed out the details... she could see the amusement sparkling there as she stated yet another "I don't know what that means," and as she teased him about something or other... as she managed to make a successful joke...

They had been happy. Beyond happy. He was the only thing that had ever made her feel happy, in her entire life. He was her everything, her only. And the realization that she didn't deserve him, that she was helpless and damaged and everything that he would never want for the long term...

Her legs gave way underneath her as she collapsed beside the railing, still clinging to it desperately as her shoulders shook and the tears came far too rapidly for her to fight off.

It was one thing to be afraid. It was another to know that the end was coming no matter what one did to fight it. That was another level of fear altogether.

She had never wanted to die so badly, to just curl up and cease to exist. Because maybe, just maybe, that would ease the agony in her heart.

Yes, she loved him. She couldn't deny it any longer. She needed him. And the fact that he didn't need her...

It broke the very last piece of her that had remained whole and beautiful. And now she was nothing at all.