Every few moments, he'd twitch. His hand, his leg, maybe an involuntary pluck of his finger, which he'd lift self-consciously and smooth back an unruly black hair or his perfectly groomed brow. Anyone who was familiar with him knew it was his way of communicating his frayed nerves. It was mounting hysteria, slowly unwinding composure, like a coil, apprehending an unexpected spring at any moment.

But there was no one there. Not a wisp of human traces. The furniture was quiet in their neglected state, unruffled, undisturbed by careless hands. He had smoothed out the wrinkles while he'd been waiting, even progressing so far in his unhinged state by taking out the packet of wipes Natalie had left for him, just in case, and swabbed down every last inch of the living room. At first, it'd only been the chairs. The leather had looked like a health hazard to his keen eye, which would have gone unseen by any other relatively sane person, but not to him. The question of his sanity had been asked many times. Some wondered if it was just a matter of time before it was answered. But he was beginning to wonder if there was ever going to be an answer.

With the furniture now glistening perfectly, and not a speck of filth to be observed by his unconventionally sharpened senses, he merely sat there, flinching, glancing uneasily at the phone on the burnished coffee table. He didn't dare to touch it, in fear of smudging the glass, but he reasoned with himself, knowing he could at least look at it. It was motionless, stuck in its mechanical repose. He hoped it would be suddenly startled out of its paralysis.

He was waiting for the Captain to call. Perhaps for anything, really, a sign that pointed due north, the rain to fall, Christmas to come. Anything to remind him that the world was still tilting, correctly, on its axis. He would have liked it much better, if it rotated straight up and down, but he could live with it. As long as he didn't have to see it off kilter, and as long as he always thought about a year in terms of three hundred and sixty five days. Fifty two weeks was hardly an even number. It made him shudder just to ruminate over such a fact. Why did everything always have to be uneven?

His hand twitched again, and he gave himself a little shake, just to realign his own axis. It was beginning to droop. He reached up to his neck and readjusted the shirt collar, as if it were wrinkled or off center. It wasn't, but he tried to forget the thought. It was only because he was worried. Everything always seemed out of place when he was worried. It was his way of setting straight what was crooked when he had no control over truly fixing it.

It was Natalie. Last month, she'd been hurt. Hurt in a way that Monk had finally decided she couldn't be healed, at least not now, perhaps not ever. That light was always broken. He remembered, a while ago, when both he and Natalie had been waiting for the 'Don't Walk' sign to change, so that they could cross the street and retrieve their checks for that week. He remembered almost everything, at least the things that bothered him. A missing button, a scratch on the window, a stain on his freshly starched shirt. All were culprits in the incessant endeavors to drive Adrian Monk out of his mind. He reckoned he was already out of his mind. But they pushed him further out of that little safe place of order and arrangement that he liked to think was his own perfectly balanced world.

But Natalie had been driving, in a car. The same way Trudy…His mind veered away from that thought quickly, as quickly as if he'd been walking and encountered an unforeseen crack in the sidewalk or something equally insalubrious, something he couldn't quite bring himself to think about without feeling the bile rise in his throat. He had the nagging urge to brush his teeth. So many germs in the human stomach…it just wasn't healthy.

His mind returned to the incident, the one that he was sure he'd finally figured it out. It was always doing that…deducing every little detail. It was what he was good at. It was his last normalcy, something he could control. The entire world could be submersed in bedlam, a chaotic prison where dirt and disorder and every other undesirable existed, and Monk would still be able to exist as long as he knew there was a case to solve and an answer to construe.

This one had been rather vague, like looking out of a rain-soaked window, and all the outside world was immersed in a blurred dream world. Natalie had been quite different lately. Almost as if she were unsure, careful, walking across thin ice knowing that, at any moment, it could break and she'd fall into the icy, comatose reality below. She should have known he'd notice, with Monk being….Monk. That was who he is. His entire life was built on the foundation of construing the misconstrued, filtering through the jumbled layers of clues until he could find exactly what was supposed to be found in the first place. An answer. Monk's purpose in life was to find the resolution.

This one had been rather hard to discern. They were little things, like Natalie avoiding his eyes, but leaning closer into his touch, when he dared touch her. When she had been distraught, she had collapsed in his arms, crying into his chest, despite his cold rejection of any human contact, and though, at first, he'd gone as stiff as a cadaver undergoing the chilling process of rigor mortis, he began to slowly melt into her warmth. It was like Trudy's warmth. Very soft, like downy fur. That had been one of his more prominent clues. One of the few.

His eyes returned to the phone. It had begun to convulse, as if it were seizing. A vibrating noise began to resonate throughout the silent room, and the chafing vibration of the phone's sleek, hard back against the glass was beginning to hack at his frayed nerves. He groped for it, desperate to end the torment.

"He-hello? I can't talk now, whoever…this…is. I'm waiting for someone to call. It's important. I'm sure you'll understand."

"Monk," came the wry voice of the Captain. "It's Stottlemeyer. It's about Natalie."

Monk began to fidget uneasily again when he glanced at the clock, even as the Captain began to diverge from the unconventional greetings into Natalie's condition. "Captain…Captain…" Monk stuttered.

"What, Monk…What is it that can be so much more important than Natalie, huh? Is there a spider on your wall?" He paused, and a certain edge of sarcasm began to creep back into his voice. "…Did someone spill milk on your carpet?"

"You called at 8:03….at 8:03. Couldn't you have waited until 8:05? 8:03…isn't…even." He spoke haltingly, staring at the clock, unblinking, unmoving, as if he'd forgotten how to breathe.

"Monk. This isn't the time to exercise your defects....something's happened. You need to come down here right away."

"No…no, no. No, that's not a good idea...." His voice began to trail off, heightening a little, hysteria returning. Suddenly, the room felt smaller. Suddenly, he felt like vomiting, and the thought catapulted him into a silent frenzy.

"That's not a good idea…"Stottlemeyer parroted. "Right. Well, would you like to explain to me why that's not a good idea, Monk?"

"My shoes. I haven't polished them yet. Everyone will be staring at my feet. It's just not right…what kind of citizen would I be, going out into public with scuffed shoes?"

A normal one? Stottlemeyer decided to keep that one to himself. He gave an impatient sigh, "any other good reasons why you shouldn't come see her?"

"My house is a mess. I haven't vacuumed since…yesterday. And the floors are filthy…filthy, Captain. What would you do if you had filthy floors?"

"I don't know. Hire a maid?"

Despite the Captain's reluctance to cooperate with his reasoning, Monk continued. "And the drapes...oh, Captain let me tell you about those drapes. They're...they're all..."

Stottlemeyer's frustrated sigh ended the pathetic attempt before it had even begun. "Monk, you're not a liar. We all know you're not a liar. Even Randy can lie better than you and..."The Captain gave a short, barking laugh. "Let's all face it. Randy is a horrible liar."

There was an awkward silence. But it was not the Captain that suffered the plaguing quiet, it was Monk. He balked at the idea of seeing Natalie, having to face her, having to face those pretty blue eyes of hers, and that sweetly innocent face. Because then he wouldn't be able to deny the fact, and not only that, but he wouldn't be able to refuse.

"Speaking of Randy...he'll be there in a few minutes to pick you up," Stottlemeyer announced, slowly, carefully. "You're going to see her today. You have to."

Monk slumped sulkily in his seat and groaned uneasily, and the phone fell from his unfurled palm.

This was going to be harder than he thought.

AN: Hey there guys. You might all remember me as Garish Gashes. Well, I'm back with Answers in honor of Monk's final season. I don't know how long it will be and I'm hoping I'll be able to finish it this time. If not well...we'll see.

Monk + Natalie = Love.

Disclaimer - I do not own Monk; it belongs to USA and its creators.