Author's Note: Warning, depressing. I caution those who really don't like character death to be forwarned, and I PROMISE, it isn't depressing after this. I know I promised this out a long time ago, but after posting Hell's Rite, I decided to give it a couple days.

While normally you can't stay in a hospital overnight, this is the children's ward, and when my brother had his procedures done last year they children's hospital actually had a place in the room for parents to sleep if they so desired. Yes, I'm stretching this adaptation a bit; I need it to work this way.

I've been pulled over a couple times, but I've never actually been served a ticket, so if I messed up, again, please let me know so I can do better next time. (I do know that the end situation is a VERY bit unlikely, but hey, you want me to wrap up this depressing stuff don't you?).

VIETNAM MEMORIAL

THE MALL, WASHINGTON D.C.

"Hey there H.R. It's me, Sarah." She touched the engraved name and lit her tall candle, placing it below his name on the horridly cold plastic turf.

Some people might think it odd that she visited and held conversations with a spirit trapped in a glass-like wall. It seemed like it was unbreakable, but in the same instant, as though her touch might shatter it. Some might find it odd that she talked to her best friends dead father, but to her it was perfectly normal. Commonplace, even, she probably talked to him more than his own son did.

She could imagine him, on the other side of the wall. Not the immortally twenty-eight or so man that Harm saw, but old and tired and worn. In her mind he was twenty pounds heavier and had shaved his moustache, his face was wrinkled and creased with age. He had aged, in her mind, from the picture of him in Beloinka. The man she saw was the age of a retired grandfather, with blue eyes that sparkled, but behind that, there was an infinite sadness that nothing could cure. He leaned towards her, his black hair smeared in gray, his hand outreached for her.

She could imagine he touched her fingertips. She kept talking, she couldn't seem to stop, and finally with only the hundreds of faceless white names as witnesses, she cried. She collapsed and wrapped her arms around her knees and cried. She moved one hand into her still damp hair. She couldn't seem to stop.

Other afternoon visitors watched her with curiosity, but also with respect, some had seen her before. The man, if they could pick him from the never- ending list was likely her father or brother. They left her, shaking with cold, and snow gathering around her, her sobs turning to whispers of hurt and betrayal. She could imagine Harm Senior as he slowly turned his back against her.

1006H LOCAL ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE MINUTES SINCE LEAVING THE HOSPITAL

And image came to her screaming through he mind closer and closer faster than she could comprehend and crashed into her like a mashing of symbols in a marching band. Dark, a lake, trees, a werewolf, as scream, a cry, a jolt. All came rushing to her like a kick in the face. Red werewolf eyes blinked at her. Red eyes, like a Kim Delaney sci-fi. Red eyes. Startled, she clamored to her feet. Scared, and shivering, she made her way to her car.

WASHINGTON GENERAL HOSPITAL

"What's wrong?" She asked when Chaplain Turner answered Sturgis' phone.

"You need to get down her Sweetheart. As fast as you can." It was all he said and hung up.

EN ROUTE TO GENERAL HOSPITAL

Mac slowed when she saw the gumball's flash behind her. "Shit." She pulled over.

The officer knocked on her window before she could roll it down with the hand crank. She was shaking violently. The officer shinned his flashlight in her eyes and the interior of her car. He took in her frozen and dripping hair and her paint stained green-faded-to-jade sweatshirt.

"Ma'am, do you know how fast you were going?"

"80-85." Mac answered truthfully, this was not what she needed right now. "I know it's illegal, but I need to get to Washington General. Now."

"What's your hurry ma'am?"

"Something's really wrong. Please. My name is Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie Marines JAG Corps. 01/09/65. I'm not drunk, I'm not high, and I do have an arrest record. Give me the ticket I'll pay the fine. Please." He couldn't be sure later, but perhaps something in her voice had been just desperate enough, or her current state of panic was more than just concern over a speeding ticket, but for whatever the reason he ignored all good and sound judgement, and opened his mouth: "Get in. My partner and I will take you in the cruiser." With no objections she pulled her keys from the ignition, took her purse and dropped into the cruisers barred rear seat.

"What the hell?" His partner looked at him. The officer made no response, but turned on and off the siren with a 'blurp-blurp' and was on the road.

WASHINGTON GENERAL HOSPITAL

WASHINGTON D.C., VIRGINIA

Not waiting for the elevator Mac fled up the stairs leaving the still- concerned Deputy to follow. When he caught up to the final slamming door she was already out of view, but as he turned the corner he heard the same panicked voice.

"Mickey. No." The boy about twenty-three or there-abouts was on the floor, only a wall seemed to support him, his hands were covered in red. What had happened here? He came closer and he understood, it was there, just beyond the door. The blood still hot was pooling into the dips and cracks on the floor. A standard military issue Glock .45 gripped tightly, the eyes wide and staring, still leaking tears.

An orderly stood helpless nearby, as if afraid to approach the body.

A white-haired man leaned on a cane giving last rites to the dead body in futility feeling just has helpless. He saw the woman he had pulled over and understood her panic and he pain.

"Not again." Was the only thing the boy seemed capable to say. Over and over, he couldn't stop. His rhythm changed at last, "not to Bud. Not to Bud. Not to Bud..I don't know what to do."

The Deputy watched, seeing all. Unable to shut it out. The woman, she took the boys hands and wiped the blood from them with a handkerchief. Wiping his hands clean of the blood. Telling him the only way she know that it hadn't been his fault. It wasn't anyone's. He understood.

A second coloured man appeared, he'd never left for the airport, and the woman latched to him, as if all her energy were expended, but yet, she seemed to hand on, and the man returned her struggling embrace as if he too were drained of all momentum. Time hung frozen in the air, tears brimmed in his eyes. The Deputy watched those glassy eyes turn to liquid in the strong woman's embrace. She stood silent, never letting go. Silently he stepped unnoticed around the corner and radioed for his partner.

When he stepped back around the corner the black man and the woman had disarmed and loaded the empty-headed body onto a stretcher and the orderly was silently cleaning. Mopping.

"Excuse me." He poked the woman's shoulder after she'd left the body for a moment. "My partner and I are going to take care for the suicide report for you. The ticket's on the house. Don't worry Miss." He saw no wedding band, only a gold and red Marine Corps OCS ring on her second finger. Her neatly trimmed fingernails were caked under with half-dried blood.

"MacKenzie.Mac. Thank-You."

She had been so distantly familiar to him until this second. "Sarah MacKenzie and John Farrow. Didn't I arrest you once?"

Sturgis, Mickey and Chaplain Turner all turned her way expectantly.

"Deputy Powell?" She saw him for the first time. "D.C. Metro black-and- white 109 case file 107-285-A. Murder One, Victim Christopher James Ragle. Dead on Arrival. Super 8 Motel room number 401. Yes Sir. You did. I was acquitted. A witness came forward."

"I thought I recognized you."

"You should. You testified against me." After a moment "So I suppose you want to give me that ticket now?"

"No." Was all he said.

"Excuse me. I'm sorry, am I missing something Mac.arrested, murder?"

"Harm hasn't told you my life story?"

"No. The few times I've brought it up he's said it wasn't his story to tell."

"Lets just say I've broken all Ten Commandments, more than once.and I don't even know them all. Deputy Powell arrested me for premeditated murder.what four years ago now?"

"Something likes that, yeah. My first name is Robe-Bobby. By the way." He shook her hand as his partner stepped into the hallway from the elevator and they were reminded of the reality of the scene at their backs.

"I took care of scene pictures, I didn't know how long the police would be on Christmas and his son doesn't need to see that." Sturgis handed him a camera, he'd had the orderly bring with him from the morgue.

"AJ!" She'd completely shoved it to the back of her mind, but yet passing over the doorway seemed impossible.

"That's what caused this." Mickey spoke coherently for the first time, his voice raw from repetition. "AJ went cardiac on us again. Doctors shocked the hell out of him. Couldn't get him back. Called him dead and wrapped him over. All we heard was the bang. We were all so caught up in ourselves that we weren't paying attention to Bud. You warned me. Told me to watch him, and I knew it too. He must have brought it with him after I took him home while you were gone. But AJ.he's alive Mac. Bang-Beep! The machine, it went bizzerk.it went nuts, bonkers.it just went.they didn't know what to do at first; at first they thought.but they knew he was gone.they had to.then AJ, he woke up, opened his eyes, he saw. He saw his Daddy, but I don't think he really.saw. AJ's alive. Alive with no parents. He's an orphan, and least Bud and me had a father left.AJ."

Mickey dropped his head back into his hands. No-one knew what to say.

Mac too slid to the ground: "I haven't felt so helpless since I was fifteen."

ONE HOUR LATER (1145H LOCAL) DECEMBER 25

"Mr. Roberts. AJ's condition has been upgraded to a stable one. It's the damnedest thing. He's floating in and out of consciousness. He's still on the respirator and will be for a week or so."

They heard footsteps in the hall; they turned and saw A.J. Chegwidden slowly walking in their direction in a kind of cadence. "Admiral." Sturgis was the only one of the congregation to speak. He hadn't known him or the others for as long or as well, but that didn't mean he knew what to say. Finally he spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "We don't know where to go from here." It wasn't completely the truth, but it embodied everything they felt. Mac silently nodded in agreement, and then continued her landline conversation with the funeral home. When she looked back up Harriett's parents were behind the Admiral. He'd picked them up at the airport.