Dipped my own toe into Ao3 fic-writing with some third-person-limited-dialogue-less-introspection (as I need to overcome my anxiety about getting character voices wrong to be able to feel comfortable writing dialogue) for Elsbeth inspired by both the most recent episode and my autistic!Kaya headcanon (including a little bit of speculative-headcanons for both her backstory (where I did a little slightly-modified-projecting-onto-the-blorbo by accident) and filling in the gaps of what undercover was like for her)

Also it's a songfic to this song

This time it was not just a The Pitt fanfic (as I kinda have it as a "fandom-in-law" aka fandom a lot of mutuals I follow for other things also are into so I kinda absorb enough info to not be lost in a fic or w/e despite having never seen an episode) but this Jack Abbot x reader fic that I thought at least with tweaks-on-the-general-setup-to-fit-this-other-show could make a cool Elsbeth x Kaya fic (although things that would have to be figured out would be if whatever-their-professional-partnership-counts-as would count as the cop equivalent of a similar kind of partnership to what resident and attending in medicine are considered so the mistake that starts the whole ball rolling can even happen and what HR is like for cops if it's not just IAB)

Kayabeth romance catalyzed by Accidental Baby Acquisition (in a manner similar to how I've seen it in a lot of Buddie 911 fanfics and no I'm not doing the parallels between them on purpose all the time) as yeah I know if Kaya was living with Elsbeth again it'd be an apartment and it'd be hard to easily discreetly do the baby-on-the-doorstep cliche in an apartment building but just like fire stations aren't police stations also places one can safe-haven unwanted babies so maybe a while after the dream team are back together they come back from a crime scene to a very noisy dropped-off-baby that [whichever of the two it'd be most in-character for as it wouldn't necessarily have to be Elsbeth just because she's had a kid before] seems to be the only one who can calm down and (if you'll pardon a turn of phrase they might use as a transition card if this was an episode) One Improvised Carrier Later the baby kinda ends up tagging along the rest of the day's investigation as they like them (and might not react the same way to even other women in the precinct) and while she (yes I feel like it'd be best for this prompt if the baby was a girl) proves helpful for getting people to let down their guard in interrogations she also causes witness and suspect alike to make certain assumptions about the two ladies. And then at the end of the day whichever of the two was the one that bonded with the baby asks her roommate if they could take the baby home and gets a somewhat nervous yes cue One Baby Shopping Trip Later as they've got nothing to deal with a baby without more improv.

And thus commences a B-plot-arc-y-thing of Kayabeth trying to balance their jobs with co-parenting this little baby girl with trying to figure out why her mother left her at the station and, if she's truly unwanted, what happens to her now like can they find someplace that could give her better than what they could or do they get to keep her (and if it wasn't one of those scenarios where the child was dropped off with a note explaining things like their name like you see in some fiction and Kayabeth got to keep-enough-to-name this little girl I imagine the name would truly be something special potentially (between first and middle) pulling from everything from departed family members of theirs (like Elsbeth's grandmother the way she talks about her) to pop culture hyperfixations of theirs to someone from Elsbeth's past iykwim) and in the trope-ily likely event they got to keep her might being mom-and-mom awaken some things within them that it seems everyone else sees before them (even before the daughter entered the mix) and Elsbeth get a second shot at having some sort of family

there's some sort of precinct Halloween party or w/e and Kaya was finally able to be convinced to dress up now that she can on the job so she teases some surprise hard-to-find costume she'll reveal at the party (as that wouldn't be end-of-episode) and the mystery costume...is her dressing as Elsbeth (perhaps in some outfit iconic to one of the iconic Kayabeth episodes of S2)

Explanations

no it's not just her overattachment tendencies that make me think BPD but things like her relationship with guilt and impulsive behaviors (like while I know BPD doesn't have to mean doing illegal/dangerous shit in "Hot Tub Crime Machine" we did see her tote bags full of shit from S1 crime scenes)

While I'd of course love Kaya to come back to regular, recurring guest star doesn't have to be synonymous with this undercover arc or any future ones as it'd get boring if we saw her in this kind of episode every season just in different environments under different aliases and that combined with the cliffhanger is leading me to believe we're setting up for a season-end where Elsbeth saves "Denise Jackson" from getting in over her head in some dangerous way or w/e and then Kaya decides to leave the task force and come back "home" because she realized she kinda jumped into the deep end of the pool even modulo the training and then in the S4 I'm 99% sure this show will get if she doesn't come back to regular by then she's just another one of the detective rotation and some episodes would have Kayabeth crimefighting together, some wouldn't have her at all, and some would have Elsbeth professionally with another detective while Kaya's a part of the B-plot

I'm a big fan of the idea of if an actor's a certain minority status and nothing else would get in the way making them canonically something else (like how Jewish actor as well wouldn't also mean Jewish!Teddy as Elsbeth isn't and when one's Jewish by blood it's usually calculated via maternal line) the character should be that minority status so as Micaela Diamond is Jewish and Samantha Edwards (as is apparently her full-but-not-in-the-sense-of-using-the-middle name) needs more depth/backstory anyway why not make her also Jewish and maybe we could even have a Parade reunion with Ben Platt playing perhaps one of her polycule (but in his hypothetical episode no he wouldn't be the murderer they'd have just both known the victim via temple so it's easy to call the cops when one is your gf)

not just the talk-show-themed season premiere but seeing Elsbeth's theatricality even-more-so on full display made me think that since she wouldn't have the time to do both a scripted and unscripted show (though if Colbert has to leave it would make a certain amount of "bring the circular meta full circle" if he was succeeded in that theater by, idk, Way Late With Carrie Preston ;) ) I'd want to see her do either of those kind of short-term hosting-y gigs as it feels like she'd (no pun intended) kill it in that kind of show environment (esp. SNL if one of the skits she appeared in was one of those Broadway medley thingies and if none of them poked fun at Elsbeth itself)

That's my theory/headcanon for the Watsonian explanation why her theater-geek ass doesn't recognize how many people in her orbit look like Broadway stars because (esp. when you add makeup and costumes in the mix for the shows she'd have actually seen not just listened to cast recordings of) she just can't see those faces as the same because of her various neuroweird

Yes I am still carrying a torch for So Help Me Todd and esp. since it feels like Matlock is reaching its inevitable ugly end given the key player lost to scandal maybe SHMT could sneak back in but be teased by Skylar Astin (as the episode with Angus showed big-name one-off guest stars don't have to be the killer) playing the kind of character who could feasibly be Todd on some kind of undercover mission of his own who ends up helping Elsbeth on a case when one of the people who actually legitimately work wherever his undercover identity is (idk, maybe he'd be like some kind of IT guy or something) ends up dead and when SHMT comes back Todd brings up some undercover case in NYC in some context (maybe trying to convince his gf Judy to pursue detecting by telling her about this amazing woman he met who reminded him of her or something) whoever he's talking to says they didn't remember him taking that kind of long trip then Todd responds with something like "with everything going on sometimes I'm not even sure what year it is" (little meta nod like Kayabeth did in Elsbeth S2E1 about a summer lull in cases)

Not only is the whole Kaya situation implictly only somewhat temporary (acknowledged Watsonianly by the way she emphasized the temporary nature of undercover assignments in the S2 finale as yeah it was unclear if the task force was just for this one gig but why would she stress that her absence wasn't forever or w/e if it was going to be multiple-things-enough-to-spinoff-about) but the way I interpreted the news about the actress getting demoted to recurring guest star indefinitely isn't that her role would be significantly diminished or that she'd never be able to potentially-eventually pull an Amanda Rollins and come back to regular status it's that I feel like for however long this situation is the case for (I don't know why the actress made the choice she made but I feel like if it was because of something long-term she would have just left-left) they want to make sure she can be a part of this as much as possible.

So take heart Elsbeth fans (this fandom needs a better demonym than someone's suggestion of Elsbesties) be you Kayabeth shipper or not, whatever may be the Doylist reason why this all is happening it doesn't mean Kaya (never mind the ship) is out of the picture or she would have just left-left and for all I know this is a situation like what's happening on S2 of NBC show Brilliant Minds (it's just Brilliant Minds didn't give us any warning) where two of their regulars had other conflicts so had to get demoted but they've been in two of the three episodes that have aired so far and it's clear the demotion is temporary not just because of the other projects but because the narrative needs room to expand out the rest of the show's world (including new characters) when Brilliant Minds S1 focused its interpersonal plots a lot on the two characters whose actors got demoted. Come to think of it, the interpersonal-focus-y thing and narrow "world" was true for Elsbeth S2 as that had a lot of things focusing on/fleshing-out Kaya (in a way I don't feel like they'd do if she wasn't still gonna be core to the show) like the night school/promotion-obstacles stuff, the brief-yet-beautiful time Kayabeth spent living together and the romance with Cam the squint guy. So maybe even if that isn't why the actress chose to step back or w/e what the narrative will do with her not being in every episode is similar to what Brilliant Minds is doing, use those opportunities to make everyone else feel as full a character or w/e so their friendship can still be core to the show without it turning into the Kayabeth show. And if there is a chance we can get her back for good without forcing it a la what happened with Rollins on SVU once they've had time enough apart to flesh everyone else out it can actually feel like an ensemble show in the way something like High Potential does.