Author's Note: Wasn't sure where I wanted to end this chapter… It ended up being a bunch of vignettes of Pride's reaction/numbness/grief directly following LaSalle's death.

Numb.

He was numb. Like when you well and truly lost circulation in your extremities. Not pain or pins and needles but dead-weight numb. Only it wasn't his body he couldn't feel. Not only his body, anyway. But the loss of that constant contact, connection one had with their emotions, the self that was always feeling, often overlaying the thinking self. One might call it the 'soul.'

Dwayne couldn't be sure if his soul was just numb or if it hadn't been murdered, too. But that didn't matter.

He'd made his choice.

The only choice he could've made. And now he had to live with it, make it count, or Christopher would've died for nothing. He turned away from the large screen gone abysmal black, noticed in a detached sort of way that Percy was doubled over panting, her dinner a mostly-digested pool of vomit on the floor. Merri's normally creamy complexion had gone sallow, and she sat trembling violently where she'd slumped down to the floor beside her desk, one arm raised, her hand still on the surface where she'd obviously placed it in a desperate attempt to steady herself which had failed entirely along with her legs. He could hear Patton smashing things in his own office, cursing loudly.

And yet, it all felt distant. Didn't feel it at all, really. Which was probably a good thing.

His phone vibrated in his hand and he automatically answered.

"Pride."

The voice on the other end gave him a location. When he looked it up, he discovered it was just over a two hour drive. Two hours alone without even his soul to keep him company.

He deserved it.

And far worse.

Without saying a word -there were no words, there just weren't- Dwayne walked out of the office and took one of the agency SUVs.

Two hours is an eternity when you don't have a soul. He tried to worry about Laurel, instead, to occupy the time. But he instinctively knew she was safe. And if she wasn't... then, well, he wouldn't be needing his soul anyway. If they'd lied to him. If she was gone, as well as Christopher, well Pride would shortly join them in oblivion.

He was halfway there, at any rate.

Laurel was an anomaly in blue jeans, lilac shirt and bright white sweater standing out in the beam of the headlights amongst the lush, shadowed greenery on the side of the road. She had a bruise on her cheek, but otherwise seemed physically unharmed. Her eyes were swollen and red, the skin of her face raw and still wet with tears. She seemed to be feeling on about the same level of her father, staring at him in a blank sort of way as he pulled over and got out of the vehicle, not running to her in relieved happiness like a father should, but slowly walking up to her. They looked at each other with hollow eyes.

Dwayne thought he should pull his daughter into a hug, but realized neither of them would gain any comfort from it. Besides, she was awkwardly clutching a shoebox to her chest.

"He told me to give you this," she said, her voice as flat and hollow as Dwayne felt. He accepted the box from her, noticing how the cardboard had warped on one side, wet and soggy with a dark stain. He didn't look inside. He knew what it held.

"Did you... look?" he asked.

"No." Her expression didn't say much, but Dwayne could tell she hadn't needed to look inside. Hopefully just because curiosity was an emotion and she wasn't feeling much of anything at the moment.

"Good," he said. "Let's get you, home."

She dutifully climbed into the passenger seat while he went around the SUV, opening the back driver's side door and reverentially placing the box on the floor, pausing to rest a hand on top in a tender caress, silently making a promise to return his friend's heart to him, to bring Christopher home and bury him in one piece.

As they drove back to New Orleans in silence, all Pride could think about, but didn't have the courage to ask, was whether Laurel had seen what they'd done to Christopher, whether she'd closed her eyes tight and covered her ears, whether they'd taken her away beforehand, spared her, or did she have to listen to the death cries of the young man who'd been a fixture in her life since she was 9 years old?

He didn't ask. Because he knew, at least in part, that she hadn't been spared the knowledge of Christopher's death. They'd given her the heart to deliver to her father, after all. And she hadn't asked after her fellow captive. But still, he didn't want to bring her back to that place, for her to see... Safe. Christopher had died so that she would be safe. And Pride had to finish that job before anything else.

Linda engulfed her baby girl in her arms, hugged her close, soothed her in a way Pride should've done but was entirely incapable of at the moment, maybe forever more.

His ex-wife's brown eyes questioned. Of course, she'd been completely aware of the events since Laurel had been taken, had kept her distance from the NCIS office only because Pride had admitted she would only distract him, her own fear for their daughter compounding his own. She knew the gang of criminals had also taken Christopher LaSalle, the man who had still been really just a boy when they'd first met, that had been a little homesick and so appreciative of the home-cooked meals she'd stuffed him full of on a nearly daily basis all those years ago. And now that Laurel was safe in her arms, she was wordlessly asking Dwayne about the other member of their family.

Dwayne swallowed that lump of tension he thought could no longer form, required human feeling to form, and shook his head. Tears began to spill over Linda's cheeks as their daughter sobbed into her shoulder. She stared at him, into him, all sympathy and sorrow, but he didn't want it. Couldn't face it.

There were still things to do, that had to be done.

He turned his back on what used to be his whole, loving family. They were safe. They didn't need him.

But someone else did. And he'd already failed him once, terribly.

Where they'd dropped Laurel off couldn't've been that far from where... It had felt like an eternity, but the amount of time that had passed between their taking her away and Peirce's phone call had only in reality been a matter of minutes. It would've been more efficient to have Laurel show him, but that was absolutely out of the question after what she'd been through. He could've called the office, too, have Patton and the others try to determine the location of that horror scene... the scene of the crime. But he didn't feel like talking to them. He'd let his team down, let its heart get torn out.

He had to do this alone. Make what little right that he could.

It took him another hour and a half of driving around the vacant back roads before he found the spot. There weren't a lot of them, at any rate, a couple dirt ones branching off the decaying pavement of the neglected old parish road. And off of those, a handful of breaks in the tree line that signified what could generously be called 'driveways', a couple ruts in the ground overgrown with tall grass, access points to the acreages with a full-time human population density of approximately 0. Technically, it was trespassing, but what did he care. The first three he'd pulled into had yielded a shed and a couple of cabins, but weren't the spot. The fourth had immediately caught his eye, the tall overgrown grassed matted down by recent tire tracks. It was a narrow path, the trees and leaves reaching out and touching the SUV like excited fans grazing a passing celebrity with their fingertips. It was over thirty yards before the dense vegetation broke and Pride found himself in the inner circle of Hell.

Really, there was nothing sinister about the place. Unless a person considered old, dilapidated cabins, creepy great old trees and overgrown fields with random bits of rusted metal and piles of old tires poking up through the tall grass a sinister place. He supposed every item in the clearing appeared like a malevolent apparition in the twilight before the dawn.

Pride didn't drive any further than the tree line, afraid... afraid that he wouldn't see Christopher's already massacred body. So instead, he began to search the clearing on foot. It wasn't difficult. He could see where the grass had been trampled, the junk dragged and heaped to one side, near that big old sycamore tree that looked like Death himself, cloaked in the black of the pre-dawn with twisted, knobby limbs pointing the way to Hell.

The wind rustled Death's hood, and there was a high-pitched screeching sort of nails-on-a-chalkboard noise that sent a chill down Pride's spine. A glance back at the dilapidated cabin confirmed that it was simply the roof metal, so old it had curled up like ribbon, catching in the breeze and creaking its forlorn yowl like a death cry.

It was answered by the caws of a flock of crows. Large, fat ones, nearly the size of ravens. A whole murder of them, finding something rather interesting upon the ground just behind the sycamore looming like Death.

A sudden flare of anger had Pride running at the birds, scattering them to the sky and the trees on the other side of the clearing. It had been a mistake to be so stubborn, having to find Christopher on his own. For he'd let the scavengers get to him. But at least, it appeared to just have been the crows, and that they'd likely just settled in, taking only a little bit of the rather fresh kill.

Because the young man was just as he'd last seen him (via remote video feed), lying on the trampled, muddy, bloody grass, his chest a deformed, gory mass with several ragged-edged ribs sticking up and a large, unnatural void exposing internal organs and the absence of that most vital one. As devastating as it'd been to watch in high-definition, it was a thousand times worse in person. Dwayne knew he would've died of a broken heart on the spot if he'd been there and forced to watch them murder his friend so gruesomely.

He kneeled down next to Christopher, hesitant to touch him at first. Maybe part of him was still holding onto denial. If he didn't touch his cold, lifeless corpse, then he wasn't really dead. But he'd made a promise, to take him home. Thankfully, the poor boy had closed his eyes in a reflex of self-preservation, not watching the accursed bowie knife sink into his chest. So Dwayne didn't have to see his friend's lively blue eyes all cloudy and sightless. But his mouth was open, probably because he'd died screaming in pain. Rigor hadn't set in too bad, though, so he was able to gently close his jaw, rearrange his head to lie in a less contorted position.

There were body bags as part of the kit in the SUV. He probably should go back, drive closer, zip his friend up in a suffocating black bag and load him into the vehicle like a piece of evidence. Hell, he should probably process the 'crime scene'. Except it wasn't a crime scene to Dwayne. It was surely a crime that had been committed, but more than that, it was an atrocity, a sin. It was the place where his dearest friend had died. Besides, he didn't care about collecting evidence. He'd find Pierce and his gang of ghouls. And when he did, they wouldn't need any evidence to prove their guilt in court. There would be no trial.

That was, if Dwayne could take care of his first promise, and bring Chris home. He unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off, his skin turning to gooseflesh with just the light cotton of the undershirt he wore. The chill air was soon forgotten and he even began to sweat as he carefully struggled with the dead weight of his slim but heavy friend. Eventually he managed to get his button-down on Christopher, closing it over the mess that used to be his chest. The young man who'd always been quite boyish looked ridiculous in Dwayne's shirt, but it was easier to pretend that he wasn't as thoroughly dead as he in reality was, when the gore wasn't on blatant display.

"I'll be right back, Christopher," he said, returning to the SUV about fifteen yards away. He opened the back, put the seats down and laid out the emergency blanket before he went back for his fallen agent. There was absolutely no reason to pick up the heavy burden of his friend's lifeless body and carry him across the clearing to the vehicle, when he could've just pulled up alongside and loaded him in. But he wasn't moving furniture, or packing out trash. This was his friend. His dead friend. His dead-because-of-him friend. So he opted to carry the burden, his burden, despite his knees and back aching in protest of every step, until he finally reached the SUV, and struggling slightly, laid him down in the back next to the box that held his vivisected heart.

"Let's go home," he said, closing up the vehicle before climbing into the driver's seat once more and turning the engine over.

It was absolutely surreal to be driving with Christopher LaSalle lying dead in the backseat. It was such a common thing, having Chris sitting next to him as they went about their job of investigating crimes. Or on their way to a fishing hole. Or a bar. Chris, all excitement and energy in the passenger seat, asking him a hundred questions about anything and everything, the case or the secret fishing spot, what they might catch, how was his favorite way to prepare said catch, how Laurel was doing in school, was his bad knee bothering him still...

Where we goin', King?

"I'm takin' ya home, Christopher."

This ain't the way ta Bama.

"Bama isn't your only home anymore. An' you know it."

Yeah. Suppose so. But I just don't want 'em ta see me like that.

"I don't either. It'll just be Loretta. I promise. She'll take good care of you."

Are ya sure ya want her ta be the one ta-

"She's the only one I can hand ya over to. An' you know it."

Quiet. That accepting, easy-going silent manner the young man often employed. Just as he could be bursting, bubbling with energy, and so easy to laugh, he was capable of simply shutting up and listening. He's a good kid.

'was', King. I 'was' a good kid.

God, it fucking hurt. "I'll miss ya, Christopher."

I'll miss ya, too.

"I love you, son."

I love ya, too, King.

He was about ten minutes out, and it was time to make the call. Dwayne wasn't sure he'd manage to find his voice again. Not after... not after the long drive with his dead friend. But he found it when she picked up the phone.

Had someone already told her about the end of the world?

Dwayne would normally consider such a sentiment melodramatic. But it really was the end of the world, the one in which he used to reside. It would never be the same place ever again.

But Loretta Wade, she knew. He could hear it in the unnatural calm of her voice as she said she would come out to meet him, seemed to know that he wouldn't, he just couldn't hand Chris off to anybody else.

A couple of assistants did follow her out, pushing the gurney with a body bag as black as... as black as the void in Pride's soul. He tried not to look at it. For some reason, he just couldn't think about his friend being zipped up in the suffocating plastic, the finality of it.

They'd moved toward the back of the SUV after Pride opened it, but he held them off, placing a firm hand in one of the pair's chest.

"Don't touch 'im," Pride said, wondering at what his face must look like to elicit such an alarmed response from the two younger men, who desperately looked to Loretta for rescue.

He marveled at the placating smile she managed to conjure for her coworkers, as she said in that sweet tone of hers, "We can handle this. Thank you."

Her voice had been dulcet for certain, but it was authoritative as always, and the pair complied, leaving Pride to climb up into the back of the SUV and break his heart anew as he came face-to-face with the lifeless body of his friend once more. For feeling so very hollow, the pain seemed to strike him right where it counted, over and over. Numbness interspersed with excruciating heartache. If he didn't have a promise to keep to Christopher, if he didn't have Laurel and his team to take care of... Dying seemed like a far more appealing option than living like this.

It was nearly as tricky as loading the solidly-built young man into the SUV as it was getting him out, but it was a punishment Pride deserved. Hell, he deserved far worse than the coating of blood and gore that transferred onto his undershirt, pants, skin as he found himself all kinds of up-close and personal with the corpse. But Loretta helped him, looking down upon the young man's lifeless face after they'd settled him onto the gurney. Dwayne had pulled the body bag off and tossed it aside. Instead he covered him with the now stained blanket he'd laid him upon for the trip back, but he left his face uncovered, seeing Loretta gazing upon him as she was. He fetched the box, laid it on top of Chris' stomach.

"Make 'im whole again, Loretta."

She nodded.

"Oh, my poor, sweet boy," she said, gently placing a hand to his placid, unnaturally slack cheek, the mournful, affectionate touch of a mother. Loretta Wade may never had had children of her own, but she was maternal to the core, and took in just about anyone and everyone that passed her way. But even so, there were those that were more family to her than others, including the lifeless young man Dwayne had delivered to her care.

She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears.

"You can let go, now, Dwayne," she said. "I've got him."

He followed her gaze down to his hand, where he'd taken Chris', was holding so tightly, squeezing it as if his friend was still alive, still in pain and he was desperately trying to comfort him. He needed to let go. He knew he never would be able to, not ever, even though he released the lifeless hand, gently placing it by Christopher's side.

She reached out, squeezing his arm, looking into him with her richly dark, empathetic and tearful eyes.

"I promise I'll take good care of Christopher," she said. "You go home. Be with family."

Dwayne nodded, knowing which home, which family she meant. It was the one he'd failed. The one he couldn't possibly face again. How could he claim to be their leader, their friend anymore?

He'd let someone rip their heart out.

A/N: We'll check in again with our grief-stricken team, see how they're coping after some time passes… If they're coping at all. Also, look for an appearance by Abigail Borin.