A/N: I'm SO sorry for the massive delay! Beyond work issues, I've had a heck of time with this story, getting things organized, trying to have things make sense and fit together, etc. Missing scene fics are so much easier, because there's an established framework to build on, and a defined beginning and end. Here, I've got her someplace we've never really seen her on the show, and with a state of mind we never really saw her in. And then so much time went by without me writing. I finally did a full re-watch of S7, so I could "hear" the characters better again in my head. Hopefully, I've done an ok job keeping it realistic for the characters.

Chapter 2: Delusions

The first couple of days that Brenda was gone weren't too bad for Fritz. He missed her, of course, but he was used to some separation when she was working on a case. The woman pulled all-nighters with relative frequency (he had no idea how she could function so well on so little sleep), and a couple of nights without her was not unusual. There had also been a few times when they'd barely seen each other for a couple of weeks at a stretch when they were both busy with separate investigations. Once, they'd gone nearly a week with their only communication being a few very brief phone calls and the occasional short text message. Such was the nature of working in law enforcement. And right now, the long hours were welcome. He had a couple of investigations that seemed to be ramping up significantly at the moment, and the extra hours they required provided a good distraction from the fact that Brenda would not be home for some time and, unlike when they were busy with work, he couldn't just stop by her office to visit her for a few minutes just to see her beautiful face and give her a hug.

But even though her being gone at night wasn't unusual, he hated sleeping alone, even when they were apart for just one night. He always missed the feel of her soft warm body next to his, how she looked when she slept, the soft sighs she'd sometimes make in her sleep. And he'd never tell anyone that he did it, but whenever she wasn't home, he slept on her side of the bed. Then he could at least have the scent of her lotion and shampoo surround him. This time, he even left her robe where she'd left it the day she went to Atlanta, tossed carelessly over the foot of the bed. He planned on leaving it there all week until he took off the sheets to wash them. He thought he might even put it back after he remade the bed. He had no problem giving himself the illusion that she was near and would be home soon rather than being over 2,200 miles away for an extended length of time. He had noticed Joel sitting on her robe watching him get dressed for work one morning, so Fritz could even pretend he did it for the cat's sake, to give him a reminder of Brenda. After all, while Joel might officially be Fritz's cat, he could be a real mama's boy.

Fritz figured he could keep up his delusion for maybe a week at the most, until the weekend anyway. Beyond that, he had no idea what he was going to do.

The first couple of days she was gone weren't too bad for Brenda, either. Like Fritz, she was used to some separation and days and nights apart in the middle of investigations. And she may not have had a case to work at the moment, but that didn't mean her days were empty. On the contrary, she found her schedule for the first couple of days in Atlanta to be jam packed. There were some of Daddy's doctor appointments, which she had planned on, but plenty of stuff she hadn't. Like family dinners and relatives and friends of the family stopping by. She thought it was odd, since she was going to be there awhile, that everyone seemed to have a need to see her right away.

And then there was housework. Again, she'd planned on doing that. But she didn't really plan on the amount. Clay had grown used to Willie Rae picking up after him. He might have been a career military man, but somewhere along the way, he lost that military orderliness. Brenda remembered her Mama complaining about that. ("The man demanded perfection from his soldiers and airmen, but he can't pick up his own drawers and drop them in a hamper?!") The kitchen and living room weren't too bad, since Amy or Joyce or Charlie would stop by regularly and straighten things up a bit when they brought food over. But the den and the upstairs, well, that was a different story. And had the man forgotten entirely how to clean a bathroom?

But boy, did it make her appreciate Fritz, who not only knew how to clean up after himself but usually was the one cleaning up after her too. She told him as much when she called after she had collapsed into bed one night, spent from a day doing battle with the master bath.

"Honey, I want you to tell me who taught you to clean, 'cause I wanna kiss them. And if you taught yourself, well, I wanna kiss you. I swear, Fritz, I thought I was gonna have to call in an explosives unit to blast that soap scum off the shower. And the toilet? HAZMAT required. Ugh!"

Fritz laughed as she continued. But he cringed a little too at some of her descriptions. Brenda had a tendency to be overly dramatic, but he had a sinking suspicion some of her descriptions weren't all that exaggerated and may have been dead on. He'd lived with guys before, and he remembered the science experiment gone wrong that was the bathroom in his frat house.

"…and why there are dishes everywhere, I don't know." She sighed, winding down her rant.

"The tables have turned, huh?"

She didn't miss his pointed tone. "Hey! I'm not that bad!"

"No, no you're not. And clutter is definitely not the same thing as grime. I'm just teasing, honey." He wouldn't mind having her there to clean up after right now. But he pushed that thought aside, still trying to avoid missing her too much. Joel scampered by, off on some unknown cat mission, which reminded him of something from earlier.

"Oh, speaking of toilets, Joel almost took a swim in ours today."

"How'd he manage that one?" Brenda wasn't overly surprised the cat had gotten himself into a bit of trouble. He was often getting into places and things he shouldn't.

"I'd just taken a shower, so maybe the moisture in the room made the seat a little slick, but he almost slid right in. He managed to land on his feet on the floor after some mid-air flailing. It was like something out of a cartoon."

"Is he ok?"

"Oh, I think the only thing wounded was his feline pride. I was laughing at him, and he shot me the stink eye as he stalked out of there."

Brenda laughed at mental image she got of Joel's misadventure, but tried to ignore the sting of missing both her husband and her pet. She and Fritz continued chatting, and it seemed as if both of them were making a concerted effort to keep the conversations light, as if maybe pretending they were having a casual everyday chat would make the miles of separation disappear.

Unlike Fritz, though, she didn't think she could maintain any type of delusion about her absence, certainly not for a week as he hoped he could do. After the first couple of days, once the heavy cleaning was done and the steady stream of visitors began to thin out, the reality of her absence, and the reason for it, bled back in. It didn't help that her day-to-day life had completely changed.

For most of the last 7 1/2 years, Brenda has had two constants in her daily life - her work and Fritz. Suddenly, she had neither and it threw her well out of sorts. While Fritz could go about his work day relatively normally, Brenda did not even have the familiarity of routine. The change was evident from the moment she woke up - she wasn't in her own bed, she had no job to go to, and she didn't return to her own home at the end of the day. And being in her parents' house, she was faced with constant reminders of her mother. Mama was everywhere, in every room and in nearly every object. And yet, she was gone.

But as "off" as her days felt, the nights were worse. The house was silent, but her head was not. Her mind replayed all the shit from the past year, both while she was awake and after she fell asleep. This wasn't new, but now she didn't have Fritz lying next to her to help chase away the nightmares. She was left to face them alone. She could have called Fritz, no matter what the time, and once she had, claiming to still be on California time when he asked why she was still up at 2:00 in the morning. She suspected he knew the truth though. But she didn't want him to worry and she didn't want to feel needy, so the next time she was ripped from sleep she didn't call.

Lying awake in the dark, Brenda felt like her nerves were frayed. She'd been unravelling for awhile, even before Mama's death. The lawsuit and Daddy's cancer started it and it had spiraled from there as the crap just kept coming. Then toward the end, she was hit with the triple whammy of Mama's death, the reveal of David as the leak in Major Crimes, and the showdown with Stroh in quick succession. She hadn't even really recovered from the lawsuit and she'd not had time to deal with any one thing before another blow had come. Then another. And another. She felt raw, as though she had been scored with hundreds of tiny cuts.

Brenda had felt similar before, though to a lesser degree, when a case had left her emotionally battered. When that happened, she'd climb into bed next to Fritz at night and settle into his arms. She was safe there - he was her sanctuary, her calm harbor from the storm of her life. His presence and love warmed her and steadied her. But right now, far away from him, all she had was his t-shirt to surround her and a cold pillow to hug.

And, as they had so often of late, the tears came.

TBC…

A/N: I swear it won't take me over 2 months to post the next chapter! And don't worry, the story will have a happy ending, but the path to it won't be smooth. Re-watching the last season, I was struck at how vulnerable our girl was, and then how much she seemed to have come undone in the final set of episodes. Pulling herself together will be a process, but it can't happen until she finally learns to let go.