Spoilers: Small mention of the events in the season 2 episode, "Syndrome."

Disclaimer: It's not mine, but I've decided that I'm keeping the guys anyway. No one minds, right? ;)

A/N: Yet another big thank-you to my fabulous beta, LaramieLady51, AKA Darth Mom. She's working on a Emergency multi-chapter of her own right now, and I have the honor of beta-ing for her in return. She will post it when she's finished, and I hope you'll keep a eye out for it! It's an awesome story. :D

I realized that I forgot to respond to my anonymous reviewers in the last chapter, so I wanted to do that here:

From Chapter 1:

Guest on March 11: Thank you so much! :D Your comments made me grin!

Guest (2) on March 11: Thank you! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it.

Jan on March 12: Thank you! I so appreciate you taking the time to review!

From Chapter 2:

Guest on March 14: Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the notes.

Sarah on March 14: Thanks so much for the extra info! No, I hadn't heard that, actually. :)

As always, I also thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace and his many blessings. I would be utterly lost without him.

The Last Man Standing

Chapter 3

It was beautiful day. The sky was a bright blue, not a cloud in sight, and a faint breeze stirred the air, just enough to keep everyone comfortable.

Roy turned his face up to the sky for a moment, enjoying the way that the warmth of the sun soaked into his skin. It was especially welcome after spending four weeks mostly indoors, either at the hospital or at home.

Obviously, he wasn't the only one who felt that way. From his place standing at the railing of Captain Stanley's back deck, he had a perfect view of the others who were all lounging on the available deck chairs, with the exception of Cap, who was still inside with his wife, helping her get lunch ready, and Mike, who was seated in a wheelchair.

Roy's eyes lingered on the engineer for a moment.

It was still a little disconcerting to see Mike sitting in that chair, even knowing that he would probably be out of it in about a week. He'd regained the feeling in his legs pretty quickly, but the muscle damage itself was taking longer to heal than Brackett had hoped, and the docs didn't want to risk having him re-aggravate the injury by doing too much too soon. So, for now, Mike had been told to use the wheelchair as much as possible, and to keep standing and walking to a bare minimum. His brother had come down from San Francisco to help him until he could manage on his own again, and it was his brother who'd dropped him off at Cap's place. The older Stoker had stayed just long enough to say hello to everyone and then left again, joking that he knew it was a private party - though Roy couldn't help thinking that Mike's brother wasn't actually that far off.

They hadn't planned it that way…not really. But, maybe their families knew them better than they knew themselves, because as soon has he'd told Joanne that Cap had invited the guys over to his place for lunch, she'd just smiled, told him to have a good time, and offered to make a batch of brownies. None of Marco's numerous relatives had decided to make an appearance either, though his mother had sent along some enchiladas, and the Kelly clan was missing as well, though Chet's sister had made a fruit salad. Even Hank's teenage daughters had decided not to join them, and Roy suspected that Emily Stanley would follow their example, leaving the guys to their own devices as soon as she had lunch on the table.

Roy had to admit that he was grateful for it. Between hospital stays, doctors' appointments, physical therapy, and as of a week ago in Roy's case, desk duty at Headquarters - they really hadn't seen that much of each other. Not as a group, anyway, and it was good to have all the guys together again. It felt right. Normal. And Roy figured they could probably all use that. He knew that he could.

Pushing himself away from the deck railing, Roy walked over to the loose circle of deck chairs and sat down beside Johnny. He let his gaze drift to his partner without a thought, automatically checking him over. There were still faint red lines marking Johnny's face and neck from where the shrapnel had struck him, but they promised to fade with time. He was a little pale, too, and anybody who knew him well enough would have been able to tell that he was still favoring his right side, but overall, he was doing well. In fact, he was set to start desk duty himself in a week or so.

Roy knew that Johnny had probably sensed his scrutiny, but his partner had a lot of practice ignoring his "mother-hen tendencies" as he'd called them, and that's what he did now, keeping his attention on Chet who was busy talking about a visit he'd gotten from some of the members of his old crew back at 8s in West Hollywood. They'd heard about the explosion - between the news coverage and the ever-reliable firehouse grapevine, pretty much everybody had - and they had wanted to wish him well.

"And Mort," Chet was saying, "he's been out of 14s the last couple years - he asked me what it was like, and I told him, 'Well, it was a lot like bowling, except we were the pins.'"

"Yeah," Marco agreed, rolling his eyes. "I guess that means somebody got a strike."

"Then Jerry - he's over at 27s now - wanted to know why I couldn't give them more details, and I said, 'Man, it felt like I got hit with a sledge hammer. I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.'"

"Do you ever?" Johnny asked, eyebrows raised.

"Oh, very funny, Gage."

"I thought so."

"You would."

Roy bit back a smile of his own and glanced up to see that Mike looked just as amused, and Marco was smirking.

The Hispanic lineman certainly looked a lot better. The first degree burns had healed, but Roy could still see the faint shadow of the bruise from his broken nose. It was much lighter than it had been, though - his face had been some pretty spectacular shades of black and blue early on. ("You should see the other guy," had become Marco's favorite response whenever somebody asked him what had happened.) Like Mike, he'd been forced to use a wheelchair for a few weeks while his hip healed, but he'd recently been cleared to use a walker instead. It sat beside his chair now.

Chet had started talking again, but Roy purposefully tuned him out, something he'd gotten fairly good at after sharing a hospital room with him a few years ago, when Chet had broken his shoulder on a rescue and Roy had needed another tonsillectomy. It was a hard-won skill, but a useful one at times like these. He found himself studying the Irishman instead. The cuts and bruises on his face had all healed, and his ribs didn't seem to be causing him any trouble. If it weren't for the cast still covering his right ankle, and the crutches propped up behind his chair, Roy would have thought that he was close to being one-hundred percent. But, Roy knew that Chet was still having headaches on and off, and they'd been pretty persistent. Brackett had been concerned enough to postpone Chet's light duty up at Headquarters for another week.

Roy couldn't help wondering if asking Chet to move at the scene had anything to do with that, but when he'd tried to talk to Chet about it, Chet had waved the apology away…just like he'd waved away Roy's gratitude when he'd thanked him for what he'd done that night. Instead, the Irishman had insisted that he'd been too out of it at the time to have done much good by himself.

"Sure, if it'd been me, maybe I coulda called for help, but treating everybody? It took me a full minute just to remember that I had to take those bandages out of the plastic wrap before I stuck 'em on Marco. Without you, Johnny, Cap, and Mike woulda been a whole lot worse off."

Roy didn't really like to think about that…just like he didn't want to think about the fact that there was talk of an official commendation. McConnike had mentioned it when he'd stopped by to discuss the upcoming court hearings. He'd brought pictures with him…pictures of the engine and the squad before they'd been repaired. The windows on both vehicles had been shattered, and the sides facing the farmhouse had been peppered with small pieces of shrapnel, a testament to just how bad the explosion had been…and just how lucky they actually were.

They'd been fortunate in another way, too: the herbicide had qualified as only "mildly toxic," and it must have burned off pretty quickly, because none of the other first responders had developed the fluid build-up that they had. Thankfully, the crew of A-Shift had all recovered from the exposure in a relatively short timeframe. Roy's own lungs had cleared up after about a week, though a couple of the guys - Marco and Chet in particular - had needed a few more days to make it through the worst of it.

The sound of the screen door sliding open brought Roy's thoughts - and Chet's conversation with the others - to a halt.

"Alright, everybody," Cap announced, "Em says that lunch is ready. We're all set up in the dining room."

Johnny was the first out of his chair, and Roy had to smile a little. One thing was for sure: the accident definitely hadn't hurt his partner's appetite.

Marco and Chet were slower, Marco leaning on his walker as he pulled himself up into a standing position, and Chet reaching for the crutches behind him.

Roy stood as well, enjoying the fact that his back no longer twinged when he moved. He was still plagued by the occasional headache, but they were becoming fewer and farther between, and Brackett was confident that they would soon disappear altogether. Just a week or two more of light duty, and then he'd finally be back on the A-Shift. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too long before the others would be able to join him.

Walking over to Mike, Roy bent down to release the brakes on his wheelchair and then gripped the handles as he started pushing the engineer towards the door. He caught sight of the back of the wheelchair and had to shake his head. At some point over the last few days, Chet had cut out a picture of a fire engine from a magazine and taped it to the chair. Beneath the picture, in Chet's messy scrawl, were the words, "Little Red." Roy wasn't sure what Mike actually thought about Chet's joke, but maybe the fact that he hadn't bothered taking it off of the chair said it best. Still, Roy wondered if "The Phantom" might find himself regretting it later, once Mike was back on his feet. It was always the quiet ones, after all.

Marco had reached the door first, Chet just on his heels, and Roy paused behind them with Mike, waiting for Marco to maneuver the walker over the slightly raised doorstep.

"Come on, hurry it up, Grandpa," Chet complained.

Marco turned around to glare at him. "You're not exactly Speedy Gonzales right now either, Chet."

"You wanna bet? I've gotten pretty comfortable with these things." He motioned with a crutch to demonstrate.

Marco scoffed. "That's not what I've heard. What was it Dwyer told me yesterday…something about a visit to Headquarters and an incident with some steps…?"

"Slander, pal. Pure slander. I'm poetry in motion."

"Poetry?" Marco's lips twitched. "Sure, a limerick maybe."

Chet sputtered indignantly, and their argument continued, all while they were both still blocking the doorway. Roy would have minded it more if it wasn't so obvious that Chet and Marco were enjoying themselves.

Mike didn't seem to mind it either, but his tone was wry when he said, "I guess 'Little Red' needs an air horn."

Roy snorted at that. "Don't give Chet any ideas."

"You fellas planning on joining us any time soon?" Cap called, his voice drifting out from the house.

The question effectively ended the linemen's debate, and Marco and Chet made it through the door at last, Roy and Mike following behind them.

The dining room was right next to the kitchen, just a short distance from the porch. The room was curved on one side, with a large bank of windows facing the Stanleys' back yard, offering almost the same view they had from the deck. Cap's wife had decorated those windows with flowing white and yellow-gold curtains that complimented the gold carpet. A hutch rested along one wall, but it was the large, mahogany dining table that was the obvious centerpiece of the room.

Roy didn't have to guess where Mike would sit - a space had already been cleared to make room for his wheelchair - so he got the engineer situated, then bent down to set the wheelchair's brakes again, waving away Mike's quiet word of thanks.

He made his way over to his own seat, once again taking the chair beside Johnny, and he found himself staring at the food-laden table. Emily Stanley really had outdone herself. Roy almost wondered if this lunch was actually a ploy to help them gain back the weight they had all lost over the last few weeks. It would give them a good start in any case.

Anita Lopez's enchiladas were laid out on a platter, and the fruit salad Chet's sister had made was in a glass bowl. But, next to that were cold cuts, slices of cheese, a plate of vegetables, and rolls to make sub sandwiches. Potato salad, coleslaw, and a pot of some kind of soup rounded off the meal, along with a single-layer cake and a plate of Joanne's brownies which were obviously meant to serve as dessert.

Emily bustled around the room as soon as they were seated, making sure everyone was comfortable and had whatever they wanted to drink. When she was finished, she stopped beside Cap and bent down to kiss his cheek, whispering something in his ear that made him smile. She stood up with a smile of her own, wished them a good lunch, and then left without another word.

Chatter started up almost right away, but Cap cleared his throat and stood, and everyone immediately fell silent. Roy's eyes automatically landed on the sling Cap wore, the one keeping his right arm cradled against his chest. Like Johnny, faint red lines marred his features, and he still had a slight limp when he walked, but both were fading as time passed, and if all went well, it wouldn't be too much longer until he'd be able to lose the sling as well.

"Before we get started," the Captain began, "there's something we need to do. Roy, I hear you're up for a commendation, and as far as I'm concerned, you certainly deserve it. But no matter what happens there, well…I know you probably don't want me to make a big deal of this, but some of us might not be here right now if it weren't for you. So, on behalf of all of us, I just wanna say thank you."

There were murmurs of agreement from around the table, and Roy looked down at his lap, biting his lip. Chet wasn't the only one he'd talked to about that night…all of the guys had found a way to thank him on their own over the last few weeks. He hadn't known what to say to them then, and he didn't know what to say to them now.

"Gentleman," Cap prompted.

Roy glanced up again to see that he had raised his glass of lemonade with his uninjured arm, silently calling for a toast.

"Aw, Cap," Chet complained, "we can't toast him now - we don't have the right stuff to toast him with! We need champagne or something."

Cap gave an exasperated sigh. "Just do it, ya twit."

Chet obediently picked up his own iced tea, then leaned over to Johnny, frowning. "Milk? Really? You're toasting him with milk?"

"Shut up, Chet," Johnny retorted.

The argument was enough to make Roy smile, and he relaxed, though his throat went dry a second later as Cap raised his glass a little higher. "With our gratitude to the last man standing."

"To the last man standing," the others echoed, raising their own glasses.

Roy ducked his head and resisted the urge to fidget in his chair as they all took a drink. Cap reclaimed his seat, and a moment of silence followed. Roy looked up again to find that they were all watching him, obviously expecting him to say something.

"I uh…" He reached up a hand to rub the back of his neck, trying to find the right words. "Thank you for doing that. It means a lot. But I…I don't think I did anything that special. It's just the way things worked out. All of you would have done the same thing in my place."

He saw a few somber nods, and knew that each of them was probably trying to imagine what it might have been like, what he might have felt. He didn't really want them to, though - he hoped they'd never have to be in that position. He wouldn't have wished it on anyone.

"Just don't make me do it again."

Roy hadn't actually meant to blurt that last part out, and the words hung in the air for a few seconds before Johnny smiled wryly.

"Tell ya what, partner - how 'bout you don't make any of us return the favor and we'll call it even?" he suggested.

Everyone laughed, and Roy couldn't help but join them, feeling something uncoil inside of him at last.

"You've got yourselves a deal."

Fin

A/N: A quick note on the type of poetry Marco mentions: a limerick is a short, five-line poem that is very often humorous. They're considered to be part of "nonsense literature."

Thank you to everyone who has been reading, and especially those who have reviewed. I hope you've enjoyed this last chapter, and please let me know what you think!

Take care and God bless!

Ani-maniac494 :)