He walked home. It was twenty blocks, but he didn't care. He had to walk. He couldn't be around people on the bus with their music and conversations and newspapers. With their lives. It would only remind him that his best friend didn't have one anymore.

Eighteen blocks.

He swallowed hard. Back at the debriefing session, going over the transcript, talking the whole thing over with the team for the official report, he'd been able to numb himself, block everything out of his mind except the bare words on the page. Black and white. Even. Consistent. Everything his world was not right now.

They'd all looked at him with worry, with concern.

He was fine. He was good. He was okay. They were his team and they didn't need to worry about him. They had enough to deal with already. Everyone had their own problems and why should his be special enough for the others to worry about? He could take care of himself. They all could.

Fifteen blocks.

He shook his head involuntarily. He didn't want to think about Lou, about the bomb, about every little detail of the day, but with two hours of debriefing locked in his mind, he couldn't really think about anything else. He couldn't let his mind go blank the way it had in the board room. There was no one around to see him if he fell apart between here and home. No one that mattered.

But he fought it anyway.

Lou was dead. Somehow, that thought, that fact seemed bigger than tears, like it was worth more than just a few hours of crying. Only, he didn't know what exactly it was worth, what he could do to make everything better and ease the terrible, cracking pain of his own heart.

Ten blocks.

There was the day he'd joined Team One, after making it through all the tests, all the training, all the evaluations. Lou had been with the team only a couple weeks longer than him, but he'd treated him just the same as all the others had: a green rookie who didn't know one end of a rifle from the other. There'd been pranks of course, but he'd been so happy to be part of the SRU that he hadn't really minded. And after the dust had settled, he and Lou had become good friends. The best of friends, in time.

Seven blocks.

They'd been through a lot of bomb scares and threats and situations before. Maybe some people would say that they'd been through too much, cheated death too many times, taken too many risks. And maybe before today, he would have laughed a little, shaken his head, and brushed it off. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Because they'd taken one too many chances and Lou had paid for it.

Four blocks.

He kept walking, one foot in front of the other. And then he remembered other feet, another foot, Lou's foot, trapped on top of the land mine, and he forced himself to look up and away from the sidewalk. The sun was almost set, a ball of orange fire, but he didn't see any beauty in it. All the sunset meant was another day coming to a close, which meant that soon he'd be back at SRU, waiting for the next mission. He could take a few personal days, but if he did that, he might not come back.

One block.

And he wanted to come back. That was the worst thing about it. The job had taken Lou's life and twisted his own heart into something he barely recognized, but he still wanted to go back and wait for the hot calls, the hostages, the people who needed something the team never got except from each other: protection. And in the end, even they hadn't been able to give that to Lou. But he still wanted to go back. He didn't know why, not really. The team was counting on him. And so were all the people who needed their help. That was part of it.

Then he walked up the stairs to the apartment and that was where it hit him.

He needed to go back, because if he didn't, Lou's death didn't mean a thing. Lou had stepped off that mine so he wouldn't be there when whatever rescue attempt they tried had failed. If he didn't go back to SRU tomorrow and put on the gear and check his bomb equipment and make sure Babycakes was in the best working order she could possibly be, he wouldn't ever go back and Lou would have failed in his last mission: to make sure the team didn't lose two guys instead of just one.

He knew. So now the healing could begin.

Spike was at the door, and, taking a deep breath, he pushed it open.