"You’re early,” Legaspi says, looking even more surprised than I had expected.   

She peers at me from behind the screen door of the gray-violet house with what I can only interpret as a vague but distinct chilliness. 

 I try to not let that dwindle the enthusiasm I put into the grin I beam up at her.  I extend the little basket I’ve placed the wine and jar of jam in and swing it slightly making the big red silk ribbon I’ve tied to the handle flutter.   

“A gift.” I say brightly and she opens the screen door and then steps back voicelessly giving me permission to enter.  

Okay.  What the fuck?   

“Is this a bad time?” I ask and she looks at me and shrugs, then tucks her hair behind her ear and takes the basket from me.   

“Thanks. “   

“I just felt, you know, after we intruded the other night and the glass of the picture frame got broken…”  I drift off, staring at her.   

She’s eyeing me with some kind of blank dull gaze.  It’s as if she is trying to reach a decision about something to do with me and how she’s going to react to whatever it is she’s thinking.  

 I frown, puzzled and ask again, “Is this a bad time?  I glance down at my watch.  I’m a half hour early but I’d rather expected Legaspi to be pleased with me; not annoyed.   

“Not really.” She says, with what sounds like a definite combative tone.   

“Who are you talking to?” I hear Weaver call from the back of the house and a moment later she comes into sight and then stops when she sees me.   

She’s dressed casually; light colored cotton drawstring trousers and an oversized tee.  She’s barefoot and I notice for the first time that Legaspi is wearing some version of the pajama pants she’d been in the other night and a wrinkled tee shirt. She’s barefoot as well and it’s obvious her hair hasn’t been brushed.   

“We had a late night,” Weaver says, smiling slightly and coming further forward. 

 “Is this~~ this is Tuesday, isn’t it?” I ask, thinking I must have fucked up and come on the wrong day. 

 “It’s Tuesday alright, “ Legaspi says, voice flat.  She tries to lighten the tone by smiling but it never reaches her eyes and doesn’t even curl up the corners of her mouth.   

She is definitely upset and pissed off at me.   

“What’s wrong?” I ask and try to keep the whiny tone out of it.   

Here I had been actually looking forward to seeing her and not only because I had come up with an ingenious way to hide the tape.  I’d actually been thinking that morning as I showered and dressed that it might be good to talk about Jase and allow someone to give me permission to stop beating myself up over his death.  I’d stared at myself in the mirror realizing that I have strung the words “Jase” and “death” together in my mind more than once in the past two days and I am still standing, I am still dry eyed and sober and relatively okay with it.   

Driving over I had reached the conclusion that it would behoove me to take advantage of this chance to speak with a shrink about him and what had happened, particularly one this far from Texas.   

They reassure you that if you turn to the Department's  Psychology Team it stays entirely confidential, but let’s get real; their offices are located at Head Quarters.  If you show up twice a week at the same time and enter that set of offices it doesn’t take Nancy Drew to figure out you’re in there puking up your mental turmoil and trying to reach some level of emotional peace.  Not to mention there is then a computer file on you within DPS records.   

But here… I can tell her anything, talk to her about all of it.  Maybe even some stuff that was not so great before Jase.  Maybe about how that stuff from a long, long time ago was why I had needed him so much and why he had become so important to me, why his death had ripped me not so much in half but into shreds.  She can stick a little tape labeled “Finn” on her shelf next to “Exstead” and who cares?   

So here I am finally anticipating the relief of confession and unburdening myself and it’s taking every ounce of professional courtesy and innate politeness she possesses to not launch into a rant directed at me. 

 “Would one of you tell me what’s wrong?”  I demand and I realize I’m oddly disappointed and maybe even a little sad.   I don’t particularly like either of those emotions so I immediately slide my inner gauge over to “potentially pissed off”. 

I find I’ve planted both hands on my hips and have my feet apart.  I glare up at Legaspi. 

 She lifts her brows slightly and utters a peeved grunt, then turns and strolls off down the hall carrying the basket into the kitchen.

 Focus, Finn.  Make sure the jam goes into the handy fire proof modern storage unit called a refrigerator.   I trail after her and pause when I come up to Weaver and ask again, voice not quite so irate, “What’s going on?” 

 She, at least, is not angry with me.  The gaze is calm but there’s a hesitation and a certain measure of concern in it as well. 

 “She’s tired,” she tells me and glances towards the kitchen and I realize that whatever it is she definitely wants Legaspi to be the one to tell me.   

“She had a hard night.”  She pauses and corrects herself.  “We had a hard night.”

 I gaze at her and then move into the kitchen and watch Legaspi slam a coffee cup down on the counter and fill it, then throw open the fridge door so hard the jars in the door shelf rattle as she snatches out the carton of milk.   

The basket, I remind myself.  She can rip your head off for whatever it is you’ve done but the jam has got to go in the fridge.   

She’s laid it on the little pine and tile table against the back wall and I move towards it, eyeing her.  Every movement shrieks of barely contained rage and carefully tempered wrath.  If I were to do anything so uncouth as to open her fridge and attempt to put away the jam or the wine she might very well spin around and backhand me right now.   

I strive for a light and cheerful tone.   

“I hope you guys like huckleberry.  It should go in the fridge for several hours before you open it; improves the flavor.”

 Nothing.  Weaver enters the room and stops, gazing at Legaspi’s rigid back.  She’s standing staring out the window over the sink, elbow bent and mug to her lips. 

 “I can put it and the wine away,” I offer but my dazzling social skills and charm fall on deaf ears.   

I glance at Weaver who is looking at Legaspi’s taut shoulders and back.  Finally she sighs and slides her eyes to meet mine and leans back against the doorway as if exhausted.   

She has a hand up pinching at the bridge of her nose as if in pain and there’s a definite pucker between the reddish brows.   

“You’re being childish,” she says finally and I realize it’s intended for Legaspi and not me.   

At least I hope it is.   

If it’s possible at this point Legaspi goes stiffer and more rigid still and after a frozen few seconds she slowly turns and glares at first Weaver then me.  It’s a thoughtful scowl, full of consideration; not the charitable emotion sort, unfortunately.   

The “Now, exactly how was I going to remove her head?” kind.   

I feel distinctly uneasy.   

Weaver does some tight-lipped version of a smile in my direction as she crosses to the table and lifts out first the wine and then the jam, studying the labels of both.  

 I hold my breath as she scoops them up in the easy manner of someone used to managing with one free hand and release it when the jam is safely in the fridge among the other jellies.  She slides the wine butt first into a well-stocked wooden wine rack to the right and turns to smile at me again.   

“Thank you.  Unnecessary but appreciated.  And now I’m going to go out and finish my coffee and the paper on the back patio.” Weaver says, apparently to both of us.   

“I’ll let you two hash this out.” She adds.

 Oh goody.   

I watch her turn noticing she’s slower than usual and moves with a definite lurch of the shoulders.  She’s physically demolished from whatever has kept them up all night.  It definitely has not been any of the good kind of staying-up-with-your-girlfriend.   

I turn my head and see Legaspi is staring at me with her chin lowered, brows drawn together like thunder clouds and the look I’m being given over the rim of the mug she’s bouncing against her lip could quite easily be termed “menacing”.   

And my only backup just limped out.  

 Oh joy.   

“Are you going to tell me or are you trying to sear it into my frontal lobe telepathically?” I ask after a good three minutes of silence and a grim, forbidding blue eyed stare. 

“Oh, I’ll tell you.” She says, voice low and laced with suppressed anger. 

Was that the whistle theme from the OK Corral I just heard?  I feel like I’m in some kind of showdown, poised for a gunfight. 

 I wait and after a few more taps of the mug against her lips she half turns and smashes it down on the tile counter top then crosses both arms and leans back against it.  She even crosses her feet at the ankles as she leans.  Every inch of her body repeats the message from the incensed, relentless blue stare on down. 

I am pissed off and I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.   

“You’re going to have to say it louder.”  I put in after another two minutes of mute fury in my direction.  

“I was hoping you’d cancel your appointment today.” She says finally.   

“Then you should have called and canceled it.” I respond and realize I am leaning up against the wall behind me and have adopted the same exact pose as her.    

I ignore the niggling feeling of disappointment that she had for whatever reason decided she didn’t want to see me.  Doesn’t she know I’ve had psychiatrists practically beg and drool to peer into my troubled psyche?  I’m a shrink’s wet dream.   

“I would have except I honestly never dreamed you’d show up for it.”  

I shrug.  “Well, I’m seriously wondering why I did.  Obviously I somehow misinterpreted what you’ve repeatedly said to me in every conversation and email for the last fucking week.” 

Instead of replying to that she gestures towards the ceiling with a jerk of her chin.  

“Guess who’s upstairs,” she says, voice eerily level now. 

I shake my head and lift a hand in a vague dismissive wave.   

“No clue.” 

 “Jinny Exstead.”  She says slowly, stressing each syllable carefully.  “And guess what sort of shape she’s in.” 

She’s here?  Has she got the email asking about the tape?  Did she come here instead of going home to avoid Sylvie?   

“What do you mean what kind of shape?” I ask, shoving myself up off the wall and half turning towards the doorway of the room.  “Is she hurt?”   

Christ.  Did I fuck up asking De Lorenzo about a partner?  Is she one of the bad guys and I got Jinny hurt with my carelessness, tipped them off I knew something?   

The stairs in this house are in the entrance hall, but they face the rear of the house, the television room and beyond it the patio.  I can see Weaver’s head bent over the paper she’s spread out over a small white wrought iron table.  The wind is ruffling the red hair and she glances up as if she senses our movement from the corner of her eye.   

Or maybe she just heard us.  Because Legaspi is definitely not being quiet.   

I don’t even get on the first step before she’s in front of me, arms on her hips, blocking my way.

 “I don’t think so.” She says, “She’s asleep finally and you are going to leave her that way.” 

 “I have to see her.” I say and try to duck past her but she grabs me by the upper arm and pushes me back.   

Calm, I think.  Reason.  Be rational.  Communicate non-violently; she’s a shrink, she’ll like that. 

 “You don’t understand,” I begin patiently but she cuts me off with a furious shake of her head. 

 “You’re right.  I don’t.  And right now I don’t want to.  Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

 Fuck.  She is hurt. 

 “Why didn’t you take her to a hospital?” I demand and she glares at me and snorts.

“For the same reason she stopped me from taking you to one,” she hisses and I look up the stairs bewildered and wonder how I am going to get past her.  I don’t think I can justify pulling the Glock and whacking her with it. 

 Yet. 

 “What the fuck are you talking about?” I demand.  “If she’s hurt she needs to go to the hospital.” 

“So she can lose her job and get written up and be humiliated?  She had more consideration for a complete stranger than that.”

I’m so lost.  I don’t get it.  I struggle to make sense of the conversation and her anger and then it finally clicks and I blink up at her in realization. 

“She got drunk.” I state and she rolls her eyes and snorts again and crosses both arms over her chest. 

“You could call it that.  I guess you would call it that.”   

I don’t like her tone.  I can feel my rage edging upwards to the boiling level and I try to hear her over the roaring in my ears.   

“—ten months of sobriety and in less than a week you—“

 “Wait a minute,” I get in.  “So she fell off the fucking wagon.  What does that have to do with me?  How is that my fault?”  

She’s furiously pissed.   

“You’re going to stand there and tell me you don’t have something to do with it?  You think I’ve forgotten about her running out of the house the other morning?  Do you actually think it wasn’t obvious what happened?”  

I know I’m blushing because my ears are so hot it’s painful.  I can’t decide if I’m more humiliated or angry.   

“Did she tell you?” I whisper and something about either my stricken voice or my gaze infuriates her and she leans forward and hisses directly into my face.   

“If you want to explore your sexuality Sergeant Finn you need to take responsibility for the consequences.  You can’t come into someone’s life and just fuck her and expect her to be fine when you can’t even look at her the next morning.  And you knew what had happened with Sylvie.  You knew.  How dare you.” 

I swallow.  “It wasn’t like that-- I wasn’t just—“   

I stop miserably and in that second I realize I’m completely furious with her.   

How dare I?  How dare she?    

Has she had the one person she ever allowed herself to need be ripped from her?  

Has she ever had to try to keep living with her heart cut out and sliced into pieces she can’t make fit back inside again? 

 How fucking dare she tell me how I am supposed to react to the bewilderment of trying to feel again.    

“You need to move, Legaspi.  This isn’t any of your business.” 

“Like hell.  This is my house and I’ve spent the last year convincing Jinny she deserves better.  You are exactly what she does not need.  If you choose to self-destruct that is your choice but no way in hell are you hurting Jinny any more than you have already.  And for sure not in my home.” 

“Get out of my fucking way,” I spit out.  “You have no idea what’s going on here.” 

“Oh, I think I do. “she drawls, leaning back, arms crossed and it’s almost too easy.  She’s a civilian.  No cop would ever put their body weight back on his or her heels with a self-satisfied little sway.

 I have her wrist in my grasp in a split second and use her own body weight to spin her around, hook one foot around her left shin and put her nose down on the carpeted stairs.  She sputters in shock and bounces down a few steps and I sprint at least five stairs up before I am stopped dead by a roar behind me that puts Sarge’s Marine bellow to shame.   

Oh fuck.  Dr. CIA has stalked onto the battlefield.  And I don’t think she’s on my side right now.

 I spin slowly around and ridiculously even have my arms half raised before I catch myself and lower them sheepishly.   

 For fuck’s sake.  It’s not like she’s armed.  

At least not with anything that will draw visible blood.

 Legaspi is picking herself up and I seize on that.   

“I didn’t hurt her.”  I point out.  I gesture up the stairs.  “I have to talk to Exstead.  It’s important.”   

I don’t know if I have ever seen anyone so angry.  She’s gone a deadly white and the green eyes blaze from beneath the tousled red hair.  The words “balefire” and “brimstone” pop incongruously into my head and when she lifts a hand and points it at the front door I physically duck.  I half expect to see sparks erupt from the tip of her fingers.   

“Get out,” she tells me.  Her voice is low and controlled, the voice of a person used to commanding and being obeyed.   

“I didn’t hurt her,” I repeat in clarification and glance at Legaspi who is rubbing the wrist I’d gripped to turn her. 

 At least I don’t think I did.   

“Leave now.” Weaver orders me and I take two steps downwards before I stop myself.   

Fucking DPS.  They implant something in your head so when you hear a certain voice you automatically fall into line at command. 

 “I didn’t hurt her.”  I repeat, stressing each word carefully thinking surely, surely she’ll get it. 

 “That isn’t the point, Cooper. “  Weaver tells me, as if I am a child.  She’s drawn herself up to full height and even though I know I’m at least four inches taller in my bare feet and I’m poised several steps above her, I feel diminutive and chagrined.   

“Leave.” She says again, voice steady.  “I want you out of my house.  Now.” 

Oh, that hurt.   

It’s an unexpected wallop and I stand through it, beat it back and manage to look down at her with dry eyes which amazes me considering what’s going on inside.  It’s like disappointing Sarge, the feeling of it, the letdown, the knowing you could have done better and should have done more.  I clutch and grope through the staggering of emotions and then glance up the stairs vaguely remembering I have to speak to Exstead.   

I try to speak but nothing comes out.  When I look back in her direction she has gone to Legaspi and is examining the wrist I grabbed to spin her.  Legaspi is holding it in her other hand, cradling it carefully and prodding it with tentative fingers. 

 “I didn’t hurt her.”  I say and I’m shocked to hear my voice choked and thick with tears.   

Weaver barely looks at me and what I get is filled with disgust.   

“Get out.  Please, don’t make me tell you again.”   

I have to move past them to leave.   

Neither of them will look at me.  I slide my eyes to Legaspi’s wrist and see it is puffy and swollen, the skin reddish and tender and there’s a clear blue-green line in an almost straight streak across the fair skin.   

Oh fuck.  I’ve had enough broken bones to know what that means.   

Above it her face is simultaneously flushed and pale and the blue eyes are rimmed with tears.  She’s backed herself up against the wall away from me, the arm held protectively to her rib cage and we’re less than seven inches from one another as I turn sideways to ease past her.   

I stop at the bottom of the stairs and try to make my mouth form the words.   

What I want to say is that I am sorry.  What comes out is a sticky, dry mouthed string of consonants and a terrible sob of air.   

Legaspi gazes at me with her eyes wide in shock and pain and incredibly enough, she actually looks sympathetic as if she’d like to sit down and discuss this whole shitty mess a bit more now.   

But Weaver…  Weaver is a ghastly white and the green eyes blaze up at me in sheer, unmitigated fury and loathing. 

I am everything she has decided to stand against right then.  I am everything she considers profane and obscene.  The sheer impact of her revulsion is far more than I can handle and I put my hands up over my mouth to hold back the horrible sound I’m going to start making any second now;  I know this sound.  I heard it repeatedly after Jase’s funeral and was shocked to discover I was the one it was emitting from.  It’s a wail, a banshee’s low discordant shriek of impotent remorse and terror. 

I get it cut off but it takes both hands to hold it in.  I’m nearly to the door when I remember with that irrefutable slice of my brain that will not detour off cop shit that I have not spoken to Jinny.   

I stop and turn and take a step back towards them.  Weaver catches the movement and wheels towards me and takes several fast steps in my direction all signs of exhaustion and weariness gone now.

 “I said leave.  Don’t make me call in the police, Cooper.”  

She’s trembling.  The hand gripping the crutch is past being white-knuckled; they stand out beneath the skin in red streaks.  She’s like an avenging angel carved from marble evicting me from what my brain wearily wants to call Eden; the morning sunlight slants in down the hallway and flashes off the crutch in metallic brilliance and I wince.  It’s her very own flaming sword and I am banished.   

I turn away from her and struggle with whatever it is that’s leapt up in my chest and is trying to crawl out my throat and when I can speak I address it to some point mid-air between us.   

“Jinny’s in danger.  To do with Chandler.  Tell her for me. “   

I risk a quick glance behind me as I open the door.   

She knew I’d check to see if I had been heard.  I can’t decipher that look; it’s too blindingly fierce to stare at without being made sightless. 

 She nods, just once.  Terse.  Businesslike.     

 “Leave.”   

One word.   

Inconceivable pain mixed with rage and frustration rockets through me from that one small syllable.  

Unwanted, unbidden Bible verses dart out from uncleaned corners as I focus on the perilous task of walking to my car.   

“Cursed are you above all things, upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life…  So they were driven out and he placed at the gate an angel with a sword of flame…” 

END OF EIGHTEEN

{~> Crossroads  Next Story, Please <~}

Author's Note:  Original title "Brighter Lonely Day (Run, Run, Run) too long for this program to save.

Lyrics courtesy of the Headstones & Xander who gave me the CD.