Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.

Mitch had had some seriously bad days in the course of his life. He had been part of a lot of ugly things. There were nights that he woke up drenched in a cold sweat after being trapped inside his head while images that were composed of his memories rather than some sort of fantasy construction played on a seemingly endless loop. He figured that there were some things in life that would haunt you no matter how much distance you put between yourself and them. He also figured that there were some things that ought to haunt you to keep you from forgetting how far you had come.

He had thought that there would never be anything that would panic him as badly as the night he knelt by his best friend as the blood pooled around the two of them knowing that there was nothing that he could do because it was already too late. He had been wrong. He had been so very, very wrong.

The sight of that cloud in the distance created a level of panic in him that he had never before experienced. He had, at least, been able to talk to Chris that night (even with a part of him knowing that his friend was already beyond hearing). He had poured out words as if they could take the place of the blood that was seeping out of him (as if they could work like glue to put him back together again). By the time the sirens had all worked their way there, he had been reduced to a half-choked out rendition of Chris's favorite song of the moment - so focused and bewildered that he hadn't even realized that his arms had been pulled around to snap on handcuffs until one of the officers was using them to pull him to his feet. There was no one to talk to now. There were no words to come pouring out of him to make himself better. He was in a car, by himself, not even ten minutes into a three hour trip home, and he had a moment of blankness that lasted until the change in the sound of his tires as they drifted off to the side of the road shook him out of it.

He corrected and felt a shudder pass through him at how easily he could have wrecked during the time he was distracted. He didn't even know how long he had been staring. He could only be thankful that there had been no other traffic. He tried to slow his breathing down in an effort to get his heart to stop feeling like it was going to pound its way out of his chest, but his attempt didn't seem to be working. He decided to focus on driving instead. For the first time in his life when confronted with stress, Mitchell Cafferty was completely silent. Not knowing where your best friend was when something horrible happened - that was enough to knock the words right out of you.

The thought that he would go to his little apartment in the back of the shop first never occurred to him as he finally rolled into town (having ended up taking a sight longer than three hours to get there - old habits pushing him to stick to back roads whenever there was potential trouble). The whole place was eerie as all get out with the lights down, but he found himself letting out a sigh of relief as he passed the school bus that was sitting at the gas station for some reason that he wasn't going to bother to try to wonder over. Its presence meant that Heather was back, and that was all that he needed to know. There was no light to be seen from the windows of the little efficiency place that Heather rented as he pulled up in front. That made him uneasy. He fully expected her to be flipping through a coffee table full of books by candlelight doing her best to get her head around what was happening. There was no answer to his knock (or to what might have turned into his pounding on the door). He was about to start yelling at windows when it finally registered that her truck wasn't there. He could have smacked himself.

He made straight for the shop and almost panicked when he realized that her truck wasn't there either, but he noticed the figure curled up on the bench by the side door just visible in the headlights. He slammed the car door a little harder than strictly necessary, but he needed to do something to vent a little bit of the tension he had coursing through him or the first words out of his mouth were going to end up being ugly.

"Hey," Heather told him wincing as she shifted on the bench. It was then that he noticed that she was sitting with her leg propped up and that it seemed to be in some sort of a splint.

"What happened?" He demanded.

"It's a very long story," she told him, "you might want to cut the engine on the car." He glared at her, but she just gave him one of her teacher looks back. He went to do as he was told. She had a flashlight on by the time that he returned to her side.

"It's maybe a little bit broken," she offered as she winced a little louder as she tried to scoot over so that he could sit. He waved off her efforts.

"A little broken?"

"They kind of had some more pressing matters to deal with at the clinic," she told him with a shrug. "I'm going over in the morning to get it sorted out."

He took her in as best he could in the low lighting. He had been around enough injuries (adrenaline had been his and Chris's drug of choice for years before they ever started hanging around Jonah's set up and the kind of injuries that it bred) to know what it looked like when someone was trying to ignore some serious pain. Heather looked a lot like what he remembered.

"They didn't give you nothin' for pain before they kicked you to the curb?" He growled getting a little indignant on her behalf.

She shrugged again.

"They gave me regular pain meds," she informed him. "They wouldn't let me have any of the really good stuff because they were worried about the potential concussion."

"Concussion?" He repeated sounding like he was gearing up for a rant. He was cut off by her watch beeping. She silenced the alarm and fiddled with it for a moment.

"Yes, concussion. No, you aren't supposed to be alone, but what they don't know won't hurt them. Alarm goes off every 15 minutes. No sleeping without someone to check on me for me. I'll be fine. Did I miss anything?"

"Yeah," he huffed, "you missed the part about what happened in the first place."

"Well," she drawled, "we could save that part for tomorrow. You look tired."

"Not happening," he replied. "I just volunteered to be your concussion check buddy. I think that means we've got the rest of the night for you to clue me in."