So this is the first time Cho killed someone. Takes place pre-Jane. Cho/Lisbon friendship, because I love the two of them. And some Cho-angst, which is weird, but hey—the great thing about him being so undeveloped on the show is that I can do whatever the hell I want with him. I have Lisbon give a big disclosure in here, which might be fundamentally OOC, but I tried to abide by the rule I did in 25 departures, when she opens up to Jane—that she might do it if she thinks it can help him in some way. They're watching a Friends marathon, which I know is not a movie, but it fit. And Cho so reminds me of this guy I know who's obsessed with friends, so I gave him that trait. Please R&R. Sorry to talk so much before the actual chapter begins. : )

Laying on my couch, closing my eyes—and his eyes, blue, wide with panic, looking years younger than he is, dropping his gun, clutching his stomach—blood spraying onto his lips, cheeks, chin, crying—

Jerking to sit up.

The pizza guy will be here in a few minutes.

It's Saturday night, and it took me three calls to find a pizza place pathetic enough to actually deliver on a weekend night. The pizza is going to be keeping me company during another long night, in which I won't be able to sleep. I haven't slept more than six hours since Wednesday, and considering how the room has started fuzzing at the edges, and the TV seems to be going in slow motion, I'd say it's becoming a problem.

I'm watching the first season of Friends—I'd never admit it to my guy friends, but I watch the show religiously. It's a peculiar trait I've always had, along with eating pickles with peanut butter, and refusing to use public bathrooms. It's unexplainable.

But you have to do things to keep busy—especially if you're me, and you just shot a forty-three year old accountant on a case three days ago, and they took your gun and badge and told you not to come back until they finished investigating you.

I guess I never really realized how much time I spend at work, because the days now seem three times longer without my job to fill them. I'm sure that if I didn't work with the CBI, I'd probably be that creepy guy scratching himself on park benches in the middle of the afternoon, because I just wouldn't have anything else to do.

There's a knock on my door, and I grab twenty dollars to give to the pizza guy.

Only it's not the pizza guy.

It's my boss, at my front door, like an apparition. I'm gaping at her because this is very, very weird—when she gestures to be invited inside.

I've known Lisbon a little over four months now. We met in early May, when I was re-assigned to the CBI, and she was brought in to be my boss. In looks, she immediately doesn't seem like she would be the head of a unit—petite, young, with dark hair and startlingly bright eyes—but she is a tough woman if I've ever met one. She and I aren't friends, or anything close to it, but I like her, and I'd like to think she doesn't entirely hate me. We work well together.

"You look like hell," she informs me. I could say the same for her. Her dark hair, probably pinned back this morning, has fallen out of place, with bits of it streaming in her face—her skin is pale, eyes raw. She has an exhausted look about her that I think I recognize—the look she has after pushing her considerable will off on something.

"If I'm hell," I reply ironically, "You're purgatory at the very least, boss."

She smiles. "It's been a long day." She's lingering now near my breakfast counter, rapt eyes looking around my apartment; I like to keep it tidy, scrubbed, characterless, and for now I am glad of it.

"Did you need something, boss?" I was trying to come up with a subtle way to ask her what the hell she's doing here; as much as I'd like to state the contrary, women very rarely knock on my door after eleven at night. And if I know Lisbon at all, this is definitely not a social call.

"Right," she replies. She puts her bag down on my counter—she doesn't carry a dainty bag, not like most women—her purse is a big heavy canvas thing, practical and sensible like she is. She reaches inside and lays my gun on the Kitchen table, and places my badge in my hands.

I am very, very confused. "But—they said it would take at least ten days to investigate, to get through the paperwork, didn't they?"

Lisbon shrugs. "It was a good shooting. And I need you on the job."

I smile, because it's nice to feel important, and I frankly didn't think that she cared so much. "But how—what did you do?"

"I made them see things my way." Her tone tells me that she's not going to say any more on the subject. Suddenly, her appearance—she looks extremely worn down, probably from haggling with the bureau all day—makes much more sense to me.

I'm turning over my gun in my hands; touching it like it belongs to someone else. It feels cold, unfamiliar. I thought I would be much happier to see it than I am.

My boss tilts her head, and looks up at me. "Should I not have done it, Cho?" Concern echoes in her deep green eyes. "Did you need more time?"

I keep silent. I can't imagine holding my gun again, aiming it again, not after what I've done with it. But I also hate sitting at home, by myself, in the quiet. I love my job.

"Talk to me, Cho," she says. She is leaning against my refrigerator, eyes searching me like I'm a witness in Interrogation that she's trying to coax into speaking.

"You've never killed anyone, right, boss?"

I would have heard about it, at any rate. The CBI can't keep anything quiet. But the sudden stricken, solemn look on her face makes me think differently. "You have," I murmur.

"Once."

"I didn't know."

"It was a long time ago. I was back on the beat at East, I only had that assignment for a year. June 23rd, 1998. I was twenty-four."

"Who was he?" Probably not an accountant with two kids who just got in too deep, couldn't get himself out. Waved a gun at a bunch of cops so his wife wouldn't find out about his gambling addiction.

I can see the reluctance shoot right through her. "It was a long time ago. I don't really remember."

"All do respect, I think you're lyin' to me, boss."

I'm expecting her to look offended; bracing myself for the firestorm sure to come, in which she tells me to mind my own business. But she looks down shyly, and smiles at me. "And why's that?"

"You remember how old you were, exactly where you worked, the date it happened. You remember him, boss." I open my cabinet with the cups in it, and pour her a glass of water. "And anyway, you're not a good liar."

She takes the water from my hands and sips it, closing her eyes. "He was seventeen," she says, surprising me. I didn't actually expect her to talk to me. "He was a small-time dealer in the neighborhood I used to patrol."

"And what happened?"

"I took a chainsaw to him," she quips. I wordlessly raise my eyebrows, and she sighs. "I shot him. He was holding a gun on my partner and me. I did what I had to."

Straight-forward enough. "So you got over it fast."

"No." She looks down. "I did some research on him… you know, after. He was just a kid. His father died when he was ten, his mother got weak after that, and died two years later. Just him and his brothers. They didn't have anything. Fell into dealing drugs." She bites her lip. "I'd met him a few times. Most of the people in the neighborhood had seen me, knew me. He'd always call at me, you know, 'Hey, beautiful, you can come and arrest me any time.' Such a kid."

I smile at that, mostly because I can't imagine anyone cat-calling my boss and living to talk about it. And then I remember that whoever this kid was, he's not speaking much now.

"And then one day… me and my partner were going down some back street. And there he was—Martin. Marty, he told me before. He asked me to call him Marty." She shakes her head. "I begged him to put the gun down. Begged him. But he didn't. So I did what I did—and spent the next eight years wishing I hadn't done the wrong thing."

"But you didn't." Somebody's holding a gun on you, you shoot them. I know that, intellectually. I'm not beating myself up because I think I did the wrong thing. I'm not beating myself up at all. I'm doing something else.

"Oh, I haven't told you the funny part of the story yet." She laughs humorlessly, but her eyes look tragic. "They did the autopsy, checked his gun, his clothes. And the gun was empty. The bullets were in his pockets."

I flinch. "Oh, boss."

"I should have known. You know? He was a sweet kid, but he was just so sad. Alone. He couldn't hurt anyone, and I knew that, I knew it. I just got scared. Lost my nerve. Messed up." She stops, and looks at me purposefully. "But you didn't, Cho. That guy was going to kill you. You did the right thing."

"I know I did." I pause. "But so did you, boss. You did the best you could with what you had."

She waves me off.

"How long did it take—to get over it?"

She sips some more of the water. "A while. Marty looked like my baby brother. And so for months, I kept having nightmares that I'd shot my brother. Crazy, huh?" She's doing that thing again when she laughs at something that's not funny. It's tragic.

"I don't think so."

"But I got back to work. And that helped me."

I realize the significance of what she's just said, and I swallow a lump in my throat. "Thank you, boss."

My doorbell rings again. It's the pizza guy this time, carrying the Deluxe Extra Large that I ordered, because my mathematically-set mind determined it was a better deal.

"I think I'm going to run now, Cho."

I put the pizza box on my table. "Stay a while. Have a slice. I can't eat this whole thing myself."

"So then what were you going to do before I got here?"

"Now we'll never know, will we?"

She shakes her head, accepting defeat, and grabs a slice, sitting on my couch. "What are we watching?"

"Friends. The complete first season."

She turns and laughs at me. "You went out and bought the whole first season of Friends?"

I shift uncomfortably. "My mother bought it for me. For Christmas." As I'm looking at the Rite Aid bag it came in, with the receipt sticking out.

"You know, I've never seen this before."

I look at her off to the side, incredulous. "Unbelievable. I'm sharing my pizza with someone who's never seen Friends. Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

"Shut up."

And we watch. One episode, then another. Lisbon laughs a lot at it, seeing all of the jokes for the first time, grabbing slice after slice of the pizza sitting on my coffee table. After the sixth episode, she turns to me.

"You know they have those, uh—those personality tests, 'Guess which character of Friends you are'? It's nice to finally know what they're talking about."

"And which one are you?"

She considers. "None of them. But Phoebe is definitely one of my aunts, though."

"Which one am I?"

She cocks her head, seeming to give it serious thought, before replying. "Definitely Chandler."

"Really? I always thought I was Ross."

"No. You're not." She says this definitively, like she's some kind of authority, like three hours ago she didn't just watch the first episode she's ever seen.

"And why not?"

"Well, Ross is a romantic, isn't he?" She looks at me. "Are you a romantic?"

"Not even remotely."

"Then you're not Ross."

I lay back on the couch. I've had four slices of pizza now, and I'm done. Lisbon isn't. "Why am I Chandler?"

"Well, he's—sarcastic, right? Witty. Cynical. And Commitment-phobic."

"You think I have problems with commitment?"

"Somehow, I can see that."

"But he ends up with Monica." Okay, so I'm evil, spoiling the ending. Sue me.

"No he doesn't. You're lying to me."

"Okay, don't believe me."

She looks at her watch. It's after eleven. "I really should go," she says, "Going to get some sleep."

"Well, that sounds nice."

I meant to sound light, but that's clearly not how I come off, because she looks at me, extremely concerned. "You haven't been sleeping?"

"Not much. But hey, it happens."

"Why haven't you been sleeping?"

I actually laugh at this question. "Uh, I'll take I just shot a guy in the stomach three days ago for two hundred, Alex."

"Right," she says. "And that's what you see."

"Not… not exactly." I clench my teeth, not wanting to talk about it, but it's only fair, considering that she shared her story with me. "It's his face—it's right—there. People look younger when they die, don't they?" Biting my lip. "He was in over his head. And when I close my eyes—" I shake my head violently. "So I don't. I'm going to stay awake."

"You bought the DVD set, didn't you? To keep you up."

"Perceptive. There's a reason they made you the boss."

"It's not going to help—not sleeping. You have to try, Cho. You have to." The kind of advice that I know now comes from experience.

I swallow hard. "There's so much blood, boss." Oh, there's water in my eyes. Lovely. I blink it back. "I think there's something wrong with me."

"I think you're wrong. There's something right with you, Cho."

And the next thing I know she's hugging me, but in a way only Lisbon would—there's no warmth, only strength. Her elbows are on my shoulders, hands on either side of my head, gripping it hard— not hugging me, but holding me to earth.