where we are lacking

Summary: It's quite hard to forget psychopathic mass murderers when they stare back at him with the familiar eyes of his partner. OneShot- Dredd, Anderson. Scenes of a case (relationship) over the years. Fic exchange for Khayr.

Warning: Drabble-esque, fractured. There is a plot, though it might be lost under all the other stuff. And. AU, probably (I have no idea).

Set: Story-unrelated.

Disclaimer: Standards apply. Last line from iv. mind games is a quote from Kusanagi Mizuho.

For: Khayr, who proposed a fic exchange and made me want to write Dredd really badly. Thank you. I really hope you'll like this.

Easter 2015

xii. 41 years

Dredd never thought he'd ever actually feel that one life for a billion other lives perhaps really was too high a cost.

"Only took us thirty years to nail this bastard." Her voice's still strong. Quiet, yes, but strong. She sounds like herself even though her hair is grey and the corner of her mouth quirks in exhaustion. She can barely hold her head upright and still she smiles. "Good riddance."

Thirty years, and her greatest enemy is dead.

She never wanted to die of old age and alone in her bed, he knows that much. Maybe she confided in him, one night in between missions in the darkness and silence that provokes confessions of sorts. Maybe he just has gotten to know her well enough to know what she wants. Cassandra Anderson has fought all her life – against criminals and murderers, against the system, against her past and herself – and she always wanted to die like this. Go down fighting. She is a warrior through and through.

This shouldn't be hard, then, should it?

"Dredd?" Her hand moves, flutters against the cold stone floor like the wings of a dying bird.

"Yeah."

She breathes a sigh of relief at his voice and he is stuck by the realization that she really thought he'd left. He takes another look at her: her eyes are wide open, grey like the sky over the Cursed Earth. But they don't follow his movements when he shifts. He swallows a curse.

Her hand is still twitching slightly. He covers it with his and wonders whether it always was this small.

"You finished him."

"We defeated him, together," she chides him gently and a cough shakes her so hard it is painful to watch. He knows all the symptoms: it's no surprise there is blood on her lips afterwards. "I don't know… Maybe he'll…"

"No," Dredd says and he knows. He knows with earth-shattering security that Judge Death won't return. "You– we won. He won't come back."

Her hand grips his, surprisingly strong for a dying woman, and her sightless eyes are grey-blue-green and calm and familiar. He can feel her probing his mind, the well-known, mental echo: like a hand that still never really touches him but whose warmth is there. Familiar; welcome, even. "Promise me. He won't come back. And if he does, you'll defeat him."

Whom is he reassuring? "He won't come back. I promise."

Dredd hates promises. He never promised anything to anyone and he doesn't intend to do it now but his lips work either way. What is he promising, he wonders at the same time. Is he trying to placate her or truly telling her he'll protect mankind the next time the Dark Judge might appear? Whatever it is, Anderson should know it; she knows him, after all. But she only sinks into herself a bit more, her shoulders dropping as if every bit of strength has left her. Life is draining from her slowly but steadily and he can't do anything to save her. Josef Dredd kneels in a pool of blood next to the woman who was his partner more times than he can count and watches her die.

"This is better," she whispers. "Going like this. When Corey… When she died… I wanted to kill myself, you know. But… you… So I didn't. This…" She draws another breath, labored. "This is better."

There is nothing he can do. He wants to smash something, scream in frustration. Put the entire magazine of his Lawgiver through the hell-forsaken bastard that has done this to the woman in front of him. The asshole that is taking away the only person he–

"Dredd."

"I'm here."

"Please." Her voice is breaking. The sound of blood in her lungs increases with every labored breath she fights to take. "Don't…"

He strips off his helmet and gloves in one angry movement and takes her hand into his, cups her face with the other. Her skin is cold but the contact – skin on skin – seems to calm her. A tear trickles down her cheek, crystal-clear, and drops.

Down.

Down.

Down.

"Thank you," she whispers and smiles, brilliantly, as if this allowance of his – his mere touch – carries the ability to save her. As if he is offering her salvation of some sorts, a meaning so deep it is beyond words. And Josef Dredd watches Cassandra Anderson die. Even in this last moment of hers, he thinks numbly, she doesn't enter his mind, not even to say those words that have hovered between them for forty-odd years now.

She looks peaceful. In the dim light, her silvery hair could almost be mistaken for blond. I'm ready, Sir. Almost like the green rookie he met, years ago, who grew and learned and became someone he would trust with his life. Someone who always fought for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Who always doubted herself most and yet saved mankind more than once.

Saved him.

Carefully, he wipes away a sprinkle of blood at the corner of her lips. She looks like she's sleeping. Maybe she is sleeping – no. Dredd can lie, but he can't lie to himself.

Bitterness does not grow slowly. It's there, suddenly, cold and furious and in full force. This was his partner. She deserved better: better than the way she had been treated, had been used, better than this cold stone floor and this short of a life. She'd deserved something more than her own stubborn belief of not, ever, being good enough.

He can hear her. The slightly wary inflection of her voice, the humor lacing it: I never thought I'd survive this long. Maybe, in the end, she was able to forgive herself. That's what counts, isn't it? And still, it doesn't feel like it's enough.

It never is.

This has happened before.

He picks her up and carries her back the long corridor, towards the light. His helmet stays next to her crushed Lawgiver.

ii. before morning

She slips out before morning, unnoticed. Dredd wakes up when the door clicks shut quietly.

Since the long-past day once upon a time when he woke up in an unfamiliar medical facility to find his brother gone and his friends dead; Josef Dredd has not slept deeply. Every awakening is accompanied by the same mantra (Open your eyes, don't move until you've placed your situation, react), the sudden transition between almost-wakefulness and complete and utter alertness. Look. This is where you are. Check. Everything in place. Move. The last thought is already accompanied by motion. Sometimes it's the grab for the gun he keeps under his pillow, or for his Lawgiver, those times when he snaps into action from one second to the other. More often than not, his reflexes have saved his life. Sometimes it's unnecessary and the only thing that greets him is the thick silence of his own quarters, the occasional rumoring of neighbors, the steps of strangers in the corridor. The roaring of motors from the street. Most mornings, he just rolls out of his bed and stomps into the shower, grabbing a towel on his way.

It's no different today, but something is off.

Dredd takes in the room. The familiar, bare walls; grey daylight streaming through the small, dusty window. A dresser, a chair. His uniform, folded neatly. Nothing out of place, down to the half-open door to the small, dark bathroom to the left. And still, something is different: like the ghost of a happening he should remember, the echo of a presence. The atmosphere feels different. Charged. A familiar scent hangs in the air.

Dredd needs a few heart beats to place it, and then he curses.

Figures that woman would sneak into his apartment – sneak up on him! – and would be able to leave without him noticing... He sets to swing his legs out of his bed.

In response, pain flares up in his head, red-hot and dizzying. He curses, and the memory floods back.

iii. closed doors

She can remember a time when she would have hesitated to even knock on the Chief Judge's door. Nowadays, though, Cassandra Anderson has no qualms barging through it without knocking when she feels the situation warrants it. Dredd's influence, no doubt. She sure is charged up enough today to do just that. But, just in case, she sends her mind into the room a heartbeat before she enters, to make sure Hershey is alone. She is. Cassandra storms through the door. The stupid thing slides closed: so much for the satisfaction of slamming it.

"What is it?!"

Chief Judge Barbara Hershey regards her from the other side of the desk, her expression giving away nothing of what she thinks of one of her subordinates – well, not exactly, not as long as Cassandra is a member of psi division, but whatever – entering her office without as much as a knock and demanding an answer rather than offering a greeting.

"Good Morning, Judge Anderson, how may I help you?"

"Don't mess with me," Cassandra snaps. Years on the street have taught her the finely-honed edge on which they sometimes balance: respect towards your superiors, but the ability to think for yourself. And this, she thinks darkly as the thought crosses her head, probably is Dredd's fault, too: she never was disrespectful before. "You were the one who ordered me here."

Hershey smiles. It's nothing but a tug at the corners of her mouth, but Cassandra knows her. She can also see the strain around her eyes and remembers that Hershey and Dredd are friends: have been for longer than she could ever imagine being friends with someone, and probably closer than those Cassandra calls her friends. The thought stings and she forcefully pushes it back into the darkest, deepest recesses of her mind. "Report," the Chief Judge orders, and Cassandra reports. Hershey listens, her fingers steepled, until the psi judge is finished.

"And you think," she asks, finally, "that he will try it again?"

Cassandra doesn't really want to think of it. Even the slightest thought at the fact that something like this could happen again makes her want to throw up.

Hershey gets up, rounds the table and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Judge Anderson." Her voice is almost kind. "I need you to answer the question."

"Yes." She can see the other woman shift, square her shoulders. Her lips are a thin line. She doesn't need her telepathic abilities to know what her superior is thinking.

"In that case, we need to be prepared. Report back to me tomorrow at 0900."

Cassandra nods, and thinks of an empty room with white, blinding lights and without a single window. She can't say whether it's despair or relief she feels. She turns to leave at the dismissal.

"Oh, and, Anderson?"

Cassandra stops, one last time.

"How is Dredd?"

All the things that have been eating at her for the past five days flash through Cassandra and she feels like she is choking on them. It's not like he talks to her.

"How should I know?"

"You've been checking up on him." Hershey is back behind her desk. She looks every inch the superior she is, but something in her eyes tells Cassandra she's not asking in her capacity as Chief Judge. It makes her angry, for some reason. She's worried, she hasn't slept in thirty-eight hours, she's seen some pretty intense stuff and dreads what else surely is to come. She needs to get back. And yes, Hershey and Dredd have history, and maybe that's why she-

"Are you keeping tabs on me?"

No answer is an answer just as well, but Barbara Hershey actually replies. Her face is impassive as she utters the words that mean everything and nothing.

"You are partners."

x. 35 years

"Never thought I'd survive this long."

There are silver strands in her short, blond hair. Usually they're not even visible, but Dredd notices. The sound of the city behind them threatens to drown out her silent voice. She still sounds the same as usual – but there is a weary note laced through her words that reminds him of too many gun-fights, too many executions and too many close calls. The weariness mixes with something like almost-but-not-quite exhaustion: as if she's seen everything, been there, done that. She's not the green rookie anymore who almost got herself killed on his watch. Bitterness is carefully hidden in the laughter lines along her eyes: suddenly, he hates them.

"You're not dead yet."

Sometimes, he wishes he knew what to say. How to act. He's watched Cassandra Anderson for years now. She initiates a conversation, talks to people and makes them open up towards her. It's the same with everyone: elder, adults, children. She makes them smile more often than not, and those she doesn't aren't worth her time, in his opinion. She makes it seem so damn easy: human interaction isn't his field of expertise, though. Josef Dredd isn't a person person. He's a Judge. He seldom needs to struggle for the right words, there is no need to sweet-talk criminals and talking to civilians is a loss of valuable time. He's not the one one looks to when it comes to saying the right things at the right time. He's better when he protects the innocent and judges the guilty: it's what he has done for his entire life.

Cassandra Anderson chuckles, dryly. She still smiles like the girl she once was. I am ready, Sir. The lines in her face and the exhaustion in her eyes don't change anything. "Josef Dredd. Always ready to hand out encouraging advice."

He snorts and looks away. She knows he's not angry, and she knows he knows she knows. It's routine, by now. The sun hits the windows of the building behind them and is reflected, his helmet system filters out the flash of light and re-polarizes the visor. Anderson lifts her hand to shield her eyes, speaks without looking at him.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily."

He grunts in response. She smiles.

One day, he thinks. One day he'll stand here alone. If she can read his thoughts she doesn't let it on: just leans over the banister next to him and watches the streets of MC-1 awaken. They've done it in the past, many times. And he wishes she would- Bullshit. He banishes the thought as soon as it comes.

Dredd watches the city come to life with her and thinks that maybe, he will miss her.

iv. muted

The sounds of the streets feel strangely quiet today. Dredd doesn't like it one bit.

It's been a quiet patrol, no major occurrences: a gang of teenagers spray-painting a wall, a bag-snatching incident. Instead of calming him, however, the uneventful day has set him on edge and he can't say why. Perhaps it's because his mind still is full of the encounter a few days ago. It's one thing to have a fellow judge and member of psi division snoop through your innermost thoughts with your permission, someone you've known for years, someone you – albeit you wouldn't admit it on most days – trust. It's something else to have an evil, twisted, horrible mind-bending criminal winding himself through your mind by force. Dredd feels exposed, raw. His head still hurts when he thinks of it, though now, at least, he is back to active duty. He parks his Lawmaster in his usual spot and makes his way through the deserted corridors towards the dressing rooms, and that is when it happens.

Later, he can barely piece back together the events. It's late into the night shift and he only passes one or two Judges and a small flock of Cadets. Then, a sound behind him alerts him to someone's presence and Cassandra Anderson slips into step next to him.

"Dredd."

He acknowledges her with a nod. "Anderson." Tries not to remember the echo of her presence lingering in his apartment.

"Feeling better?"

He only grunts in response and she smirks. "I can check up on you any time, if you think your brain is damaged. Or, more damaged than before."

He thinks he'd very much like to forget psychopathic mass murderers who call themselves Judges and who believe that life in itself is a crime. He'd also very much like to forget that said psychopath only got close to him because his brother sold him out. But really – he never expected Rico to be gone for good, did he?

"Stay out of my head."

Anderson smiles at him. Not her usual smirk, or the grimace of relief that was among some of the first expressions he learned to distinguish in her. No, she smiles. And Dredd cannot think. It's like someone switched off his brain, snap, like it shut down completely and the only thing that remains is raw feeling.

"It will be fine," she says, and it sounds like a promise. "Everything will be alright."

And she looks like Anderson, except that it isn't her.

It's something inside her that wears her skin and looks through her eyes and speaks with her voice, and he'll be damned if he almost falls for it but then he looks at her and she smiles at him. And Dredd knows.

He slams her against the wall of the corridor in an avalanche of rubble and debris. She's not wearing any protective armor, he realizes with a jolt, because she coughs at the impact and blood sprays from her lips. But there still is that smile on her face and the light in her eyes that gives him the creeps, and that thing inside her doesn't even try to fend him off.

And he's met this enemy before. He just didn't think – he'd never even spared the fraction of a thought that he'd – and now he's too terrified to form coherent thoughts because this is-

"Josef Dredd," it says and spits some more blood onto the floor. "Rico said you'd be a good choice as a host, but this one's even better. All this power! This world will tremble and fall to its knees before me."

This is a nightmare.

Dredd wants to put his hands around the slim, white neck before him and squeeze until the light bleeds out of those grey-green eyes and the pulse he feels in his hands stutters to halt but it's still her.

"Get out," he growls, his jaws locked so tightly he can barely speak. "Now."

"Why should I?" The thing inside her laughs. It's her voice, her laugh, and yet it's cold. It doesn't suit her and he loathes it. "She came straight to me, thinking she could make a difference. Thinking she could protect you. Foolish woman."

He shakes the creature in helpless fury. "Leave. Her. Now."

"But why would I?" The way her tongue passes over her lips is obscene. "Such a nice vessel. Strong, pretty. Such mental strength."

"I swear to you," he rasps. "If you don't leave her right now…"

"So what are you going to do?" The thing taunts. "Shoot her, in the middle of Justice Hall? Or, even better: hand her over to them? They'll just kill her, and you know that. You care for her enough to not let that happen, even if this foolish little girl wishes for more than you can give. There's only one solution: join me, Dredd."

It's Cassandra Anderson's body, but he can't think of it as the woman he knew. She'd rather die than be violated than this, rather die than cause the death of innocents, he thinks bitterly. And wonders why he thinks he'd know what she'd want. At the same time, he knows: he won't be able to kill her. Not like this. The creature that is wearing her body like an interchangeable item of clothing grins at him: it knows it has won.

"Together, we'll cleanse this world."

v. mind games

Cassandra fights.

It's what she's been taught since she can remember, what has been drilled into her since she was old enough to stand. She has fought and fought, and she has failed, but she always got up again. (What is precious has to be fought for, nothing one loves lasts forever if one doesn't nurse and tend it and makes sacrifices.)

"Silly girl," Judge Death snickers. "Struggle all you want. Your body's mine now."

If she could, she would scream. Shout, argue, pound into him, but she's not even capable of speech. They've lost good men and women on trying to eliminate him already once and now she has failed, as well. The Hall of Justice sent their strongest members of both regular and psi division, and nothing has proven itself effective against a monster from a different dimension. I refuse, she thinks, desperately. I refuse to be a part of this.

"Oh, but how? I'm in control of your body. You are a ghost, confined to the deepest part of your being. You have no power. You have nothing."

He almost sounds kind.

It takes her hours and hours and hours of struggle to come to the painful realization that he is right: she has nothing. She is nothing. She isn't even a ghost.

"It is curious, you know," her torturer-capturer-archenemy tells her, almost conversational, "I always thought human attachment rather useless. What has it brought you? You'd rather die than let me kill the people you care for. Dredd would rather keep me alive in a desperate attempt to save you than to hand you over to his pitiful little Justice League out there. And both of you stand no chance in ever succeeding. What do you keep fighting for?"

Life, she thinks, and maybe hope, though she isn't quite sure when it comes to that. Justice.

Death laughs her in the face. "Look what it has brought you. Your mother abandoned you, your father beat you, your fellow judges looked down on you. Where is justice in that?"

Untrue. But-

"Ah. Do I sense hesitation, Cassie?" He has taken to call her that, a sick and twisted display of familiarity. "And yet you come running when you are called upon. Had Dredd managed to kill my body more quickly, I might have died all the way. But he had to hesitate, seeing his brother's face. If you hadn't told Dredd you believed there might be salvation for Rico…"

The implications are clear. Incidentally, it's what she has been thinking the entire time. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. She deserves this: but nobody deserves to be killed because of her mistakes. Especially not…

"You still care for him? Despite everything? I have to give you that: you're resilient, girl." Death laughs. "He doesn't even care for you the way you want him to. And you still put him first?"

From the depths of her disjointed memories, the only thing she remembers clear as a day is his face.

ix. 23 years

"Come on, Dredd."

"What's this?"

"You'll see. Now move, or do I have to move you?"

Threats from her always sound half-hilarious, half-terrifying. She has the (mental) power to back them up, after all. Even Dredd recognizes this, even if he doesn't recognize much besides the authority of his superiors, the need to protect civilians and the finality that comes with death. He just doesn't know why he should follow her right now: their shift has just ended and it's late – or early, depending on the view – and the sun will be rising soon. The night was… Well. There are uneventful nightly patrols and less uneventful ones, and the latter tend to get really ugly. This night was one of those, and he just wants a long, hot shower and a good night's (day's) sleep.

But Anderson casts him one last glance and he knows she expects him to follow, and sighing, he does so. Blast her. If he didn't trust her so much he'd just leave her standing there.

She leads him up the stairs and through a maze of upper-level corridors buried deep within the Hall of Justice, and then up another stairwell that looks suspiciously like a service staircase. A heavy steel door and a blast of cool air and they're on the roof. It's like a forest of steel and stone, up here, chimneys and air ducts and antennae strewn as far as he can see. Anderson is waiting for him in some distance, patiently, until he makes his way over.

"Come on."

Dredd steps out of the dark shadows of the towering setups on the roof of the Hall of Justice. The moment he reaches the banister the sun hits the highest floors of the grey-and-stone buildings of Mega City One, is reflected and colors the steel-grey environment in a blend of gold, red, orange and violet. The display is so surprising he stops dead, feeling his hands curl around the banister.

They watch the rising sun transform the pit of darkness, cruelty and violence that calls itself city into something new, something radiant: almost pure.

It's over quickly. The thick smog cloud covering the city already early in the morning swallows the sun rays as soon as it rises high enough. Next to him, Anderson shifts.

"It's beautiful, isn't it."

He doesn't answer, just huffs.

Anderson grins at him. "Aren't you a romantic at heart."

vi. path to nowhere

The laughter rings in her head.

Triumphant, perhaps even crazed. She can feel the elation, the pride at the successfully completed mission. It mixes with the howl of the wind blazing at her: it reeks of decay and death, of hopelessness and un-life. The laughter increases, rises in exultation, its sound like blazing nails in her head. The door to Deathworld has opened, and there is nothing she can do to save the people.

Her own laughter echoes around and back again, mocking her.

The wind whips strands of her hair into her face. It's longer than before and she hates it with a fierceness she only reserved for her father before, a loathing so strong she wants to claw out her own eyes in the attempt to stop seeing, would rip out her own heart if it meant stop feeling. But she's still not in control of her body, still only a helpless audience to the scene unfolding before her eyes.

"Isn't it beautiful!" Her adversary doesn't even try to hide his glee and a stab of pain burns through her. Sunlight, steel grey and almost-blue sky and a tall figure next to her. "Soon, this world will be a sister to mine: untouched by the crimes and the poisoning existence of human beings!"

She's no trained shrink, but she knows crazy when she hears it.

(Sarcasm, last refuge of the desperate... And of the ones possessed by insane mass-murderers.)

From the grey, toxic ashes of the world before her shadows unfold, carefully slipping closer to where she is standing. The shadows thicken and take shape, and two figures emerge. With horror, Cassandra watches them from the prison of her own mind.

"Brother," the figures snarl almost in unison.

They stand in the ruins of a collapsed building, in between them a dimensional portal, like in a gruesome, horrible replica of a family reunion.

"My dear sisters."

This is the path that leads to nowhere, where mankind loses itself in the shadows of the end.

Her grandmother's words swirl through Cassandra's thoughts, perhaps a piece of an old poem, maybe only a fraction of an old saying. Why is she remembering this now? Perhaps because this feels like an end to her: Death, Nausea and Phobia are released into her world and nothing she can to stop them. And it's her fault. Her own failure, her worst, most painful defeat. She has only so much strength left – she hopes it will suffice. She has been shielding Dredd's presence from Death's notice now for quite some time. She won't make it much longer, she knows, and hopes he'll act before she can't keep up anymore. It's not that she fears disappearing completely, the consequences that will inevitably follow if she has to let go. It's that she prays to any deity that is willing to listen that she manages to dampen her captor's senses until the judges she can feel are ready to attack, and that the attack is successful. They can't allow Death and his consorts to walk freely in their world.

It's ours, you assholes. Scram.

But she can feel her strength slipping, her consciousness growing weaker. If she only…

"Wait." Death stiffens in her body, breaks out of the conversation with his fellow Deathworld judges. She can feel him probe her mind, the tiny part of hers that's still left in the corner of her existence. She can feel him hesitate. "Something's wrong with this one here. She's hiding something."

Her shields are battered and bruised. She can't stand another one of his attacks. Death sees what she's been doing – what she's been hiding, how she has tricked him – and screams in fury. If Cassandra had ears, she'd cover them with her hands.

"Kill them."

A cold order, a familiar voice. The characteristic sound of discharging Lawgivers. A commotion, a charge, and Judge Death and his two Sisters are fighting, cutting through Judges like a vibro blade through real butter. And Cassandra can feel Death grasp for her psi abilities. With the last bit of strength she possesses, she throws herself towards him.

This ends here.

His (her) infuriated (triumphant) scream echoes and echoes until it fades, and then there's only darkness.

vii. wind chime

"You're awake."

Healers always seem to feel the need to point out the obvious. Cassandra has yet to meet one who doesn't. It seems like an occupational issue, or maybe it's genetic. And really, the fact that she is thinking about things like that right now, right here, should tell her enough of her own mental state.

Her physical state – well, that's the other thing.

Two bullets have pierced her side and her leg, respectively, she has a fractured collar bone, a broken arm and more hematoma than she can count (or cares to). Because she refuses to let them pump her full of pain meds she feels every movement, every vibration of the floor. But she is in control of her body again, in complete, utter control, and the joy over the fact (almost) dulls the pain.

She is herself again.

Incidentally, everyone visiting her conveniently forgets to tell her about what happened right after she collapsed from the strain of fighting Judge Death (again). She can't remember being shot, so she guesses what came after was quite the fight. Still, she doesn't hear the actual death toll until her second week. It's then that the guilt penetrates the armor of not-caring she has constructed, sometime long ago.

They use a drug to knock her out after a particularly bad episode. When she wakes again her senses are still dulled and fuzzy and she hates it, hates the way she cannot seem to grasp at the unfamiliar minds of the people around her (at least all on the other side of the door), hates how her limbs are heavy and seem detached, hates how a fog covers everything she wants to remember and, at the same time, wants to forget so desperately. She fights and fights the aftereffect of the meds until she can focus on her hand, then on the chair next to her hand, and then on the person on said chair. Dredd's not wearing his helmet for once and he's so completely out-of-place in a hospital room Cassandra feels like bursting out laughing.

She does so.

"Have you gone insane?" Dredd eyes her, an expression on his face that best is described by mildly curious.

Cassandra stops abruptly, Asshole, and from his frown maybe she didn't only think it but said it out loud. Or did she project? She has gotten so used to just using her mental voice that her vocal cords are sore when she manages to speak.

"Clearly, since for a second I thought you'd care to ask how I am."

"How's the arm?" He nods at her left arm which still is immobilized by a splint, although it's mostly for show by now. She shrugs.

"As good as new."

"So when are you coming back?"

She thinks about that for a while. Shrugs again. "No idea."

He frowns at that. "Hershey said the medics cleared you for duty yesterday."

Cassandra doesn't answer and he leans back. Probably guesses her answer. Bastard. His brows wander up and disappear in his hairline: okay, maybe she's really projecting.

He looks at the window, looks at the other end of the bed, looks at her. Grey, grey, grey eyes. "He's not dead. He'll be back." He doesn't say: Get you revenge. Fight him. Protect the ones he'll try to murder the next time. You are alive.

You're not dead yet.

There's something almost like relief in his outer mind scape, the only thing she's ever dared to venture close to, and she hates it. Because it means something. To her, even after all this time. To him, too, but it's not the same. She hates it because, at the same time, she craves it.

But he doesn't say more.

In fact, Dredd says nothing else until he leaves. He just nods at her, grabs his helmet from the table next to the chair (so there it was, and the fact that she should have realized much earlier bites at her in something that might be anger and feels suspiciously like shame) and simply marches out of the room. The sharp, painfully familiar splinters of his thoughts remain and Cassandra draws her knees up to her chest and wills herself to disappear. She tries to fight off the aftereffects of his presence – his weariness, his hidden worry, his disapproval at her obvious unwillingness to act – but it's impossible. He's there, as usual, close and far at the same time, and she can't help herself. She rings with his presence as if they are on the same wavelength. As if her mind – her entire being! – resonates like an empty shell when he is there. Rings like the threads knotting together pieces of glass and stones she'd seen hung from the roof of a shack when she'd been brought to the place that would later become her school, her training ground and her home no matter how she felt about it. They had chimed in the afternoon air softly, almost harmoniously.

She is full of the things she can't have and empty.

Two days later Cassandra stands in front of the mirror in full uniform and wonders. Does she look different? She can't see anything.

(So it's really not the world that has changed. It's her.)

viii. 15 years

She looks like she's asleep, but he knows better.

Cassandra Anderson never looked peaceful, not in the decade and half he has known her. She looked angry, sometimes, and patient, strained, tired and exhausted. She's snarled at him and argued with him and even defied his orders, at times. He's seen her at her worst and at her best, but she never was able to be free of her own demons. And that's why peaceful is not an adjective he would associate with the psi judge, and the reason why he knows she's not simply sleeping.

But, at the same time, she is, and he knows.

Her hands are folded on her stomach. Her eagle badge glints in the bright lights of the sterile surroundings. The place is something he can imagine her in – always neat, always careful and composed – and yet something that does not suit her at all. Inhuman. Cruel. Cold. He doesn't like it the least.

Wake up.

They put on her helmet: she's faceless, like all of them are when on duty. And yet it doesn't fit. Anderson never wore her helmet when she could avoid it. Anger mixes into the uneasiness stirring in his guts and he wants to tear at something, smash it completely. He pulls himself together. It's his own restraint, it has nothing to do with the familiar voice whispering in his mind: It's better this way. Maybe it is. Maybe she was right – she had been right so often, after all – and it really was for the best. Maybe sacrificing one person to save billions was the right decision.

He can't imagine she'd want to live with the knowledge that her life had been returned on the ashes of billions of other lives.

Don't wake up.

But she's one of his closest friends. Dredd never missed much in his life, but right now, he misses her silent presence at his side.

He hates it when something like that happens: when something that was buried and forgotten rears its ugly head and rips open all the wounds, all the carefully sealed and forgotten memories. There are two beings he'd always regard as his enemies, no matter the circumstances: his brother – and this. This being that once again has managed to grasp for one of the few people that are important to him, one of the (precious, a voice whispers and he silences it) persons he cares for. She's not a family member, not a lover: but the difference is close to non-existent.

Anderson's chest rises and falls minutely. If he didn't know she was in a coma he'd might have thought her dead.

I can't give up that quickly.

So don't, he thinks. Fight, damnit. You never learned to give up, I didn't teach you that.

And what does he care? She's just another judge. Judges die. They fight to protect innocents, and sometimes they die in the process. It's as natural as the path of the sun and the stars. When judges fall, others step up to replace them. It's not a big issue. Besides, he'd always been spooked by how well she could read him, emphatic and telepathic abilities or not. Why would he miss it?

Carefully, he takes off her helmet and places it next to her. Then he turns away and leaves.

x. shadows

"Where's your partner, Dredd?"

Hershey barely glances up at him from the pile of paper work she's steadily working through. Dredd weights his options and the sound of her voice: a certain degree of impatience, a skeptical undercurrent, amusement interlacing her voice and emphasizing the last words. Years into it and people still can't believe he'd work in a team. It'd be funny, if he was in the mood. He isn't.

"You mean Anderson."

"Yes." Hershey glances up now, and something wry dances at the corners of her lips. "You know whom I meant. And don't tell me she's not your partner. Both of us know better."

Incidentally, right now he isn't so sure about that. She's been back to duty for a few weeks now but she still seems… distant. Not that he blames her. He just thought… Yes, what did he think? He calls back his thoughts sternly.

"Personal errand."

Hershey's brows wander towards her hair line. "Is that so."

Dredd just grunts.

Judges have given him pain in the past for his attitude and his unwillingness to cooperate. With Anderson, it is different. They've gone to hell and back and he has come to trust her, or, at least, he knows when he can trust her rationality and when her emotions. She's like that and he'd lay his life into her hands any day. She's his partner. They work together, they hunt together. She talks, he listens: they have developed a sense of each other that lets him know, even without having psi abilities like hers, what she thinks. Maybe that's what he's missing.

He misses her, while she's right there. And at the same time, she's not.

Hershey regards him with a calm glance for some seconds, then: "She's a good girl. Not everyone would go through what she has and come out still fighting. Give her some time, Dredd."

He can think of a few occasions when he's seen his partner falter, but he won't tell on her.

"She'll be fine."

"I'm sure she will." The Chief Judge frowns as he uses the words she had wanted to reassure him with. "Maybe…"

"What?" They've known each other for a long time. Dredd can tell when Barbara Hershey has something on her mind.

"Nothing."

"What?" He insists, almost angry.

Another sigh. "I don't know if it's a good idea to let her continue work with you."

"What?" He can't keep the incredulity from infusing his question. "You can't reassign her. She's psi division."

"I can't, but I can talk to Judge Shenker." Her eyes shrink to slits.

Dredd feels his own eyes narrow in response. "Why?"

"You know why."

He refuses to budge, anger starting to boil. At the same time, he wonders why he is fighting at all. He crosses his arms over his chest, dares her to answer. "Why?"

"For Heaven's sake, Dredd. The girl's in love with you!"

He knows his face is seldom a mirror of his own emotions but now he schools it into especially unemotional lines. "So."

Hershey regards him for a few seconds and nods, like he has only cemented her own suspicions. For some time, she says nothing.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Joe. Don't hurt her even more."

So it seems that with Anderson, he can't make anything right. He knows she is important to him. Sometimes he even allows himself to think of her as his (best?) friend. But it's that and nothing more: partners, perhaps friends. He's not stupid; showing no emotions is not equivalent with not possessing any. He knows she is – intellectually speaking – a good-looking woman. He'd lie if he'd say he'd never thought about her like that. And still it is an unspoken line he will not cross, codex or not. He won't ever say anything, at the same time, for one simple reason: He can't be what she wants him to be.

And she knows, and it hurts her. And this hurts him, too, but he can't change.

xi. where we are lacking

Cassandra Anderson knows her greatest enemy, always and forever, will be herself.

Oh, she's a good judge. She's strong, agile, quick, her aim is true and her judgement (as) fair (as it can be). She has helped save enough people that she gives herself credit for something, yet she has lost enough to know it's still not enough. She hates her weakness when it comes to the things that are important. She should be able to be quicker, at the right place at the right time. She should hesitate less, act more self-confident. Her psi powers are stronger than anyone's. She, of all, should be able to make a difference but somehow, she can't. She's not perfect, never will be.

The point is: nobody wants her to be. Or expects her to, in that case, though the nightmares still are there. Her father's voice still rings through them, cold and impassive, and his eyes tell her he expected her to fail and was proven right. He will always expect her to fail and she always will. In her dreams, all the people she has killed take up the stage, stare at her accusingly. All the people she couldn't save. All the people who died because she was too slow, too naïve, too stupid or too weak. Or all of it at the same time. She's too emotional. Too invested: judges should never allow their feelings to interfere with their duties. Too close. There is no way she can separate herself from her surroundings, and most days she doesn't even want to.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily."

He glowers at her and she glowers right back. She doesn't need her psi abilities to read his mind but he's Dredd, too, and he never shied away of saying out loud anything. Not even ugly, painful truths.

"It's for the better."

It is the first and last time they discuss this.

"I don't care," Cassandra says, hovering somewhere between fire and ice. She projects some of it, for good measure, and almost hungrily notes his mental flinch. "I don't care at all. You have many reasons to want to be rid of me. But that's not the one that will make me budge. Forget it. Or use a better one."

It's a challenge, and one he won't take. The one thing none of them will ever mention hovers between them like an endless abyss. There is a bridge there but it is too old and worn to cross it. Maybe they could but none of them ever tried, and probably none of them ever will. She knows, he knows. Both know the other knows.

"You're my partner," she tells him, her voice fierce. She might cry, otherwise. I don't want/need/accept anybody else than you.

Dredd lowers his head in acknowledgement.

There are things, she thinks, one can live with, and some one can't live without. She can live with being imperfect, even if it's hard. She can live with injustice and cruelty, even, as long as she can fight it as long as she breathes. It's not the same when it comes to Dredd. He's already a part of her so deeply she can't separate herself anymore. At the same time, she knows she'll never have him. Maybe that's the reason why she allows herself to love him in the first place.

i. 8 years

Dredd thinks she's done stupider things before. It's Cassandra Anderson, after all. The stunts she's driven in the past – well, one could just say there was a reason why they had created an entire division just to monitor people like her. She's been out in the wasteland that was the Cursed Earth and she has survived. She's partnered up with him on occasions – surely not something that does collect Sanity Points. She's done things that would've made him terribly angry, if he was someone to get angry quickly, and a lot of them have been a lot stupider than what she's attempted now. Granted, he has to admit: not many of those past actions of hers had been stupider.

Blond hair, watchful eyes, the synth-leather and Kevlar outdoor uniform despite the indoor environment, the eagle badge: her steely eyes are focused on the targets before her. She does not acknowledge his presence but he knows she knows he's there.

"What?"

He pretends not to have heard her, takes up position at the next stand of the underground firing range and proceeds to disassemble and inspect his weapon of choice for today's exercise.

"Spit it out, Dredd."

He weights the words carefully, still not looking at her. She relaxes her stance and levels down her gun – Walther P99, 9mm – but everything in her oozes impatience. That's what differentiates them: years of service have taught Josef Dredd patience, while Cassandra Anderson has learned impatience.

"That wasn't the smartest move."

She laughs. She throws her head back and laughs, and the sound makes some of the weight that has settled on his chest rise and fall and settle again, even harder this time, even heavier. Anderson secures and drops her gun and wipes tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Dredd, you're the last one I expected to be the Moral Instance."

"Not moral. Rational."

She chuckles again. "Rational? And that from the man who claims the Law is above everything." And, just like that, sarcasm infuses her voice. "You believe the System is unfaultable, too."

He has, in fact, enough evidence to suggest otherwise, but he still does not think she is right. "The System is man-made. It can't be perfect."

"It's corrupt, antiquated, inhuman and –" She stops, sighs. "What am I telling you this for? You're one of them."

For some reason, this nags at him and he can't tell why. "People are not rational," he says, finally. "They are cruel. The cruel hurt the innocent. There has to be a way to keep peace."

"Protect the weak, punish the evil." She's mocking him, or perhaps she's just reciting what she has heard a myriad of times before. Anderson sighs. "You know better than that. Justice Hall controls the lives of every single citizen. Discriminates against mutants. Forces children to do hard labor. And says it's in order to protect them. To protect them from what exactly?"

"From themselves. And the likes of them."

"It doesn't work like that, Dredd. You can't protect people from themselves. Everyone has to live in a way he can justify for himself."

"And in the process they steal, rape and murder."

"Not everyone's like this. And there has to be a way to stop people from hurting each other without restricting personal freedom."

"Theory is simple." Personal freedom ends where it begins to restrict another person's freedom. "But it doesn't work that way. Not without control."

"You talk about something like democracy, but this isn't anything like it. It's a dictatorship, and the people don't see it. They even want it!" She looks like she is about to claw at her own eyes in frustration. She looks younger like this, and still something in her shoulders never lets him forget she's seen a lot already.

Dredd feels the strong urge to sigh. "Democracy only works when everyone is happy."

"Is that your reason for not trying, or your excuse?" She leans against the banister of the firing range, her eyes fixed on him.

"Where do you want to start? Changing the world is not as easy as you think it is."

"Don't tell me what I think," Anderson snaps at him but he can see the bitterness in her eyes, hear it in her voice and see it in the defeated tilt to her shoulders. She lifts up the gun again, takes aim and shoots, straight and in quick succession. Her hits appear on the target screen, one, two, three. The hammer clicks. "It's just…"

Dredd has to lean forward to catch her suddenly quiet voice over the din of the firing range. "It's just. I don't know how to change it. But the idea is there. I can't give up that quickly."

Her eyes stare into space and he draws back to check on his own weapon one last time. He lifts it and shoots, and when the magazine is empty he looks at the target: fifteen shots, fifteen hits.

"The Chief Judge isn't happy," he says over his shoulder. "But they're not going to ditch you. You're too valuable."

"Great." Sarcasm, the last refuge of the defeated: Cassandra Anderson makes it sound like a challenge.

"Hang on to the idea," he says, quietly. He doesn't know whether she has heard it, but perhaps she's read it in his mind.

It hits him later: it's the first time she doesn't call him Sir. It's not the first time he looks at her and does not see Cadet Anderson but Judge Cassandra Anderson but it's the first time he realizes she has the face of a woman. It is… a beginning.

xiii. wish

(Maybe, a part of him will die with her.)