There is very little out there depicting Lance's first days as a psychologist at the FBI, yet I've always wanted to learn more about his relationship with April (which seemed fraught from the beginning), his first impressions of BB in therapy, and his struggle to cope with the loss of his parents (as we learn from "Mayhem," which happened right before he began working at the FBI). As some of my friends here know, I'm not all that comfortable dealing with season 3, so your suggestions and comments are more valuable than ever to me! It took some bravery just to put these first few chapters up. ;) My plan is for this fic to begin right before Lance starts working at the FBI and to end sometime around "Man in the Mud" when April dumps him. But we'll see where it goes.

*hugs* in advance to those who read/follow.

Spoilers: Season 3; Disclaimer: Not mine!

Lance Sweets had experienced no small amount of sorrow over the course of his 22 years of life. Sometimes he felt as if he were a character in a Thomas Hardy novel—fate dangled him like a hapless spider over a grainy abyss. But he had also known love, joy, and success, particularly in the form of the Sweets, the couple who had adopted him as a fractured 6 year old.

Newly hired by the FBI as a prodigy psychologist and profiler (he had already earned 2 doctorates) and scheduled to begin work in roughly 2 weeks, Lance could only think about one thing: his parents, his twin foundation, were dead. Passed away, deceased, extinguished. There was no comforting way to phrase it, because Lance couldn't bring himself to believe in an afterlife. Sappy as it seemed, however, he did believe that his parents would always reside within him. In his mind, he housed the many memories of them that had colored his life. In his heart—his emotional memory—he stored the feelings of love and comfort with which they had grounded him.

Lance's parents had died within a week of each other. What many people fail to consider is that when your loved ones die (in Lance's case, all of his loved ones, as he was an only child and adopted), you are confronted with the drudgery of sorting out the immense remnants of a person's entire life. Not only is there the funeral, but the house to clean out and sell, the taxes, the legal documents, the medical bills. Both of Lance's parents had been very ill when they had…expired. He was so overwhelmed by the prospect of organizing their miscellany that he was currently sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room of his childhood house, staring blankly, his brain whirring.

Lance had grown up in a suburb of Washington, D.C., and when the FBI recruited him as he was finishing his doctorates, he was glad to have an excuse to return to his native stomping grounds. His parents had had very little time left—both glorified skeletons really—and he had moved home from completing his Ph.D.s in New York to literally bid them farewell. He knew he was lucky; he had gotten to spend their final weeks soaking in their presence. He had left none of his feelings toward them unsaid. They had shared everything with one another, and then his precious mother and father had been gone.

The vacant Lance in the living room said aloud to the stacks of papers surrounding him, "Now what am I going to do with you?" He thought about lighting a match and running for it, but he loved this house. He did have to sell it though. He couldn't afford to keep it up, and he wanted to live in the city. He had never liked the suburbs and had spent the past 8 years living in Toronto, Philadelphia, London, and New York.

The funeral for both was scheduled for tomorrow, since he hadn't been able to put his father in the ground with his mother's health also failing so rapidly. While it would be hell getting through it, Lance was quite proud that he had arranged the event single-handedly. Lance and his mother had shared a love of literature and poetry together. She had always lightly hinted that she wished her favorite Dylan Thomas poem, "Fern Hill," to be read at her funeral. She had cried when she read it aloud to Lance as a young boy. Lance knew the poem by heart and recited its final stanza to himself as he uncrossed his legs and stood, putting his hands in his pocket in an almost casual fashion. His parents' trinkets made a dutiful audience.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.1

His Mom had ridden to sleep, the cancer and grief of losing her husband of over 60 years having drained the life from her fragile shell. But Lance wasn't crying. Whenever he recited that poem he was eight years old again, tucked safely beneath her arm listening to her rich, soothing voice.

1. Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill," in Collected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1938), 180.

After the funeral—a Jewish affair, since Lance's dad had been part Jewish and his mother a Jewess, as she liked to joke—Lance found himself shaking hands with the rabbi he had known on and off from youth. His family hadn't really practiced religion, but they had provided Lance with opportunities to seek spirituality if he had wanted, so he knew this man standing before him as a vague, friendly figure from his past. Lance's shoes were growing wet in the dewy grass of the cemetery.

"Your parents were such lovely people, Lance. They brought joy and laughter wherever they went!" the rabbi said sincerely.

Lance nodded. He was utterly numb. His eyes were still wet from the grim ceremony of several minutes earlier.

"Listen, I hear you are moving to the city," Rabbi Cohen continued.

"I just signed on an apartment in Cleveland Park."

"You should check out Temple Micah. I know you've never been very active yourself, but you could really use some good people to lean on in a time like this. Why not let God's children bring you some food and good cheer?"

Lance thought food and cheer didn't sound so bad. "I'll think about it. Thanks, Rabbi Cohen."

The gentle, rotund man with the ruddy cheeks nodded and departed.

Lance looked at the fresh dirt on his parents' graves and gasped with pain. God, he missed them unbelievably. He really could not imagine a world without them, but it was no time like the present to accept reality. He was on his own now.