A/N: I got more than a few messages from readers who told me that they didn't want Leah and Michael's story pushed to a one-shot or in the out-takes, so by popular demand, here you have it.

Don't forget to review!

Michael tossed and turned in his sleep, the bedclothes rumpled around his waist. Suddenly he sat up, eyes wide open, breathing heavily.
He had just woken from the same dream that had been haunting him for months. Drenched in sweat, despite the heavy air-conditioning, he shook his head in mystification and sighed as he got out of bed and made his way down the hall to the bathroom.
The 2 cops assigned to watch him during the nights were involved in a game of checkers in the living room, and he waved off their questions as he passed them.

In the bathroom, he stripped off his soaking wet t-shirt, shivering a little as he did so; the cold of the air-conditioning against the wet shirt was extreme. Standing bare-chested in front of the mirror, he rested his hands on the sink in front of him and stared into the mirror, as if looking for answers. Cerulean blue eyes stared right back at him, reflecting the confusion he felt.

Trying to shake off this feeling, he turned away from the mirror, turning on the shower and stripping off his sweatpants while the water heated up.
His life had been an uncomplicated one. He was popular all through high school. Played on the football team, dated the pretty girls, somehow managed to get grades good enough to get himself into the University of Washington without too much trouble. Deciding to actually go there was easy, since his best friend from high school had been accepted there as well.
Jason and he were as different as night and day. He was out-going and popular, while Jason liked to hang back, his shyness making him less likely to step up and ask the head cheer-leader out. Michael suppressed a chuckle as he remembered how the head cheerleader had ended up asking him out instead. Jason had never understood why the girls had loved his broody quiet attitude. An attitude that had covered up a wicked sense of humor and a cheerful bent of mind.
Michael's pushing had finally brought Jason out of his shell by the time they had both gone to college.
Michael frowned.

And that was when everything had changed. Being Seattle's upper crust, so to speak, had meant that quite a few of their school-mates had also gone to U Dub. And they had tended to band together. That was when he had started to really notice the changes in Sandra Williams. She had always been a shy, quiet girl. He remembered how she had been bullied in their freshman year for being in the chess club, wearing glasses and being as unlike the cheerleader bullies as possible. She had never retaliated, until their senior year, when she had ditched the glasses, tried out for the cheerleaders and shocked them all by qualifying with ease. Once they had offered her the position, she had snubbed them by turning it down and accepting the captain's position on her beloved chess club.

He had remembered admiring her guts. He had asked her out for coffee then, and they had begun to date casually. Until that party. Standing under the spray of hot water, Michael's fists were clenched in impotent rage, remembering.
Sandra had never been a big party animal. A mutual friend had invited them both to join a group going clubbing, it was someone's birthday if he remembered correctly. He had been coming down with the flu so he had convinced her to go without him, telling her she needed to let loose and have some fun for once. She had laughed and agreed, all the while arguing that she had fun all the time.
She had come over to his apartment before she left, checking to see if he needed anything. She had offered to stay with him instead of going out, and he had told her she looked too good to stay home and play nursemaid. While leaving, she had winked and then left him a saucy smile and a naughty, "Then maybe I can play nursemaid when I get back hmmmm?" before closing the door behind her.
He had heard her giggle in the hallway as she left, and that was the last time he had seen or heard her.

The next thing he knew, an anonymous voice was calling him on his phone, waking him out of a drugged sleep, telling him that he was needed at the Harborview Medical Center. Knowing he couldn't drive, he had called Jason who had taken him over. The pit in his stomach had only grown the whole drive there. As soon as he had walked in and given his name, he had been directed to her room.
Her parents were on the way, he was told, he was listed as secondary emergency contact. They had done all they could. It was just one of those unfortunate cases.
He didn't realize that he had slid down the wall he was leaning against, until he felt Jason sit next to him. He could hear them explaining that she had been drugged. He tried to explain that she would never have done drugs. She wasn't the type. She ran anti-drug rallies for crying out loud.
The doctor must have noticed the mutinous expression on his face, because he quickly explained that he didn't think she had ingested the deadly cocktail knowingly. Her drink could have been spiked, when she didn't notice.
The days after that had passed with a blur.

He remembered being at her funeral, her younger brother looking pale and drawn and trying desperately to be strong for his parents. He had loved his sister, despite their constant fighting, and he was desolate that she was gone.
Her friends had all been there, each of them throwing in a chess piece instead of flowers at her grave-site.
He had been surrounded by sorrow, grief, and mourning hearts; but he himself couldn't feel sad. He couldn't grieve. He couldn't find it in himself to be hurt at the loss of someone special. Instead all he could feel pulsing through him was anger. Rage, undiluted and potent flooded through his veins every time he thought of how someone had thoughtlessly snuffed out a life.
A shooting pain in his hand brought him back to the present. He slowly became aware that the water streaming down on him was growing colder, and his hand had a small trickle of blood coming from his knuckles. He had punched the wall apparently.

Just then he head a pounding on the door, and Jeff, one of the guards, shouted, "Hey Kid, you ok in there?"
Grimacing at how that nickname seemed to follow him everywhere, he replied, "Yeah fine, be right out"
Wrapping a towel around his waist, he wandered into the room the two agents were sitting in, grabbing a beer from the fridge as he walked past. Danny, the other agent, grinned and asked him, "Should I be carding you?" to which Michael responded with a very mature bird-flip.

Leaning back on the sofa, he closed his eyes and thought back to the dream he had started having at the beginning of the year. It was always ambiguous. He would be walking down a very leafy path and it was always with an expectant feeling surging through him. And then 'she' would show up.
He couldn't tell who she was. He was sure he had never actually met her, so she had to have come straight from his imagination. She had shorter than normal hair, swishing around her shoulders, almond shaped eyes that sparkled, dark and exotic. Wearing a nondescript pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, she would hold out her hand and beckon to him with a smile.
He would go faster, reaching out his own hand to take hers, but somehow it seemed to take him forever to reach her. Just as their hands were about to touch, he would wake up. And every single time he had the dream, in the split second before he woke up, there would be a spark of hurt in her eyes, as if he had rejected her.
And it translated to him feeling deeply apologetic every time he woke up. He felt this burning need to apologize to her.
To erase that hurt.
To tell her that no man in his right mind would reject her. And these feelings were usually followed by an intense bout of feeling very foolish for not apologizing to a figment of his imagination. Casting a quick glare at the now empty can in his hand, he mumbled a further good night to the 2 men in the room and went back to bed, to try, however unsuccessfully, to get some sleep.

Once he had left the room, Jeff turned to Danny and questioned, "Ok I know this is the second time I have been on babysitting duty for the talkative one over there, but whats his story?"
Taking a deep breath, Danny explained everything that had been in the file to Jeff's growing annoyance. Finally he exploded with, "Jesus Danny, what do you take me for, I know that already. I read his file dammit." Danny gave him a half-smile and then continued, "That was what was IN the file. What is more interesting was what they left out of it. He's a top level martial artist. He can kill about 8 men with his bare hands in under 2 minutes. You know what parkour is?" he asked the paling Jeff.
Jeff just nodded. Danny continued, "He uses parkour for training. The bust Michael and Ashley were working? He was in on it, the girl he was dating had been killed by the same cartel a couple of years ago. Apparently he took it personal... and so did they..."

He sighed, knowing the hell the youngster in the next room had gone through.
"After Mike canned the sting, somehow a couple of identities got leaked. I'm pretty sure that Jason kid got cancelled, but this guy surprised them. They ambushed him at his apartment. He was coming home, late, alone. 4 of them to kill one of him. He broke 3 arms, 1 leg, 6 ribs...," he hesitated before continuing, "and one neck."
Conscious of Jeff's quick intake of breath, he rushed to say, "The guy pulled a knife on him man... he could have shot him, but he just used his hands."
Shaking his head, Danny looked at the closed bedroom door before his face turned ugly, "I hope Mike gets those guys for what they did..." Jeff, speechless from what he had heard, finally found his voice to ask, "If he's that lethal, why are we here?"

Danny gave him a half smile before offering a theory of his own, "Because Mike likes the kid, and if anyone broke in here to try and get to him, he would probably kill them too. Mike probably wants to send 'em away instead. He got the broken neck put down to self-defense, but he might not be able to do it again."
Jeff nodded and went back to studying the board in front of him, pretending to plot his next move, but Danny knew his head was whirring with what he had just learned.
In his own mind, Danny hoped that Mike would get these guys before anyone tried to break in to this safe-house. The kid they were staying with was no longer going to be warning off his attackers.
There would be a lot of blood spilled and Danny wryly added a thought to his inner monologue, "I do NOT need the extra paperwork."

Meanwhile, behind the bedroom door, Michael gazed at the knob, digesting what he had heard. Well, at least he wasn't going to have that guy on his record.
His choices right then were to go back out there and pretend he hadn't heard them, or go back to bed where he knew that same dream was going to haunt him again. He arranged his face into a semblance of nonchalance, and then sauntered out again to join them, claiming insomnia as his excuse.
He was lying to himself as well with that. He just didn't want to see her face crumple in hurt again. He wondered if he would ever figure out who she was.

A/N: All I can ask for now is a review or two.
Loves

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