"I'm going to have to cuff you now, Henry." Jo sighed as she parked the squad car at the precinct building. She looked over at the man sitting in her passenger seat, her disappointment in his actions shown on her face. He returned the look with a slight pout.

"Now is not the time," she said through gritted teeth. Henry returned his face to a stoic state as Jo got out of the driver's seat and came around to put the chained-together sliver bangles on his He awkwardly crawled out of the car, realizing for the first time just how valuable his arm movement was to him. Once he was out on the sidewalk, Jo reached in the side pocket of his jacket and took the gun. He acquiesced completely to the arrest, letting her properly detain him and lead him quite visibly into his workplace without any sort if fight.

He kept his head down, hoping no one would recognize him. As it settled more in his mind what exactly he had done on the corner of 38th and Park, Henry felt more and more shame and regret. He could tell already this was going to be up there with the day he chose to protect his secret over saving a dying man.

He tried to rationalize it. He did it to protect Jo, to protect Abe. He did it to if not stop, at least detain the maniac that haunted his life. He hadn't even killed the man: if he was who he said he was, he'd be back soon enough.

Nothing, none of these reasons and excuses would change the fact that Henry had wielded the power to take a human life and he had followed through with it. He was a murderer, and nothing could change that.

"I know you know the drill, but I've still got to read you your rights and the legal stuff," Jo said, bringing Henry back to the present. She listed off the usual rights of remaining silent and having an attorney, etcetera etcetera, and wasn't too terribly surprised when Henry declined the attorney and asked for a phone call.

Jo led him over to a silver payphone hanging from the wall. She unlocked the handcuffs, then walked away just enough so that, though the conversation would feel private, she would be listening to every word. From her position across the room she gave Henry a no-nonsense glare.

His hands still trembling, albeit much less than they had been earlier, Henry picked up the phone from the wall hook and punched in the number on the little metal buttons. The phone rang a couple times, and with each ring he grew more nervous and tense. He tried to alleviate the stress by pacing, but the phone's cord only allowed him to take a couple steps in each direction before having to turn around again.

Jo stood off to the side, leaning up against the wall and watching her suspect. Her favorite ME. Her unofficial second partner. Her friend. She still didn't quite know what and how to feel. Then again, who would? This man she had trusted, trusted more than she realized, was about to be convicted for murder. By her own hand.

At last the phone picked up, and Henry sighed with as much relief as he could when he heard his son's voice on the other end.

"Abe?"

"Yeah, Henry?"

"I need you down at the police station. Please." He uttered with desperation.

"What was it this time?" Abe sighed. Henry imagined the eye-roll likely to have gone with it. It made him smile. Slightly and only for a moment, but a smile nonetheless. Abe always gave him a hard time when he was actually arrested for his returns. It was nice to know something was still normal in his off-kilter universe.

"I'll go get some clothes," Abe continued.

"No." Henry demanded. He looked over his shoulder at Jo, trying to gauge how closely she was listening and therefore how much he could say. "I don't... I didn't... I just need you here, Abe."

{•*•*•*•}

They had been ghosts fr some time now. Henry would drift silently in and out of the flat, barely speaking. As for Abe, he barely returned home anymore. Always out with friends, or a date, or just God-knows-where.

It had been hard on them. No, that was an understatement. It had been one of the worst things that had ever happened. No reason, no explanation, nothing. The two had been left to drift aimlessly in a cold and unfeeling abyss they didn't know existed.

Henry needed someone more than anything. Someone to comfort him and tell him everything would be alright again. And the only someone who could do that was his son.

Abe, on the other hand, didn't want to face the reality of his family. He'd tried anything to vanquish, or at the very least numb, the pain. Education did nothing, fighting did nothing, protests, friends, dates, music, nothing. Nothing could take it away. But he still tried, though he knew nothing would work.

He lied facedown on his mattress, hands holding up his head as he studied for an art history exam. The phone in the dormitory hall rang yet again, crashing his train of thought. As he was trying to refocus, his RA came and knocked on the open door.

"Abe, it's for you."

Abe nodded and came out to the one phone used by his whole hall. He leaned up against the painted block wall, trying to pose himself in some semblance of coolness.

"Hello?"

Three was no answer. At least, not on the phone. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see his father walking down the hall toward him, hands in his jacket pockets and a maroon scarf around his neck.

"I got a little impatient, I guess." Henry said when he reached Abe.

"Da- Henry, what are you doing here?" Abe asked, barely catching himself before he called his father Dad. Were anyone else to see them, they would think hte two were merely friends, possibly brothers were they to embrace as both so desperately longed to do. That was part of what was so hard for Abe now, Henry as well, but at least he'd lived this strange reality before, that moment when father and son began to look like brothers. Abe couldn't even fathom that one day his father would appear to the world as more likely his son.

"I miss her. I miss us. Everything..." Henry sighed, his brown eyes glistening with the tears he was trying to control. He wanted to say "I miss you" too but he knew the whole world would get the wrong idea.

Abe reached over and put his arm across his father's shoulders. Henry reciprocated the side hug and pulled Abe close to him, squeezing tightly, clinging to the only thing that motivated him to want to live another day.

He'd lost Abigail, but he still had Abe.

Across the road, a man watched the unconventional father and son stroll through the quad of Berkeley. He didn't want this to happen, and he would make sure it wouldn't last. But he'd let them have their moment.

And then he'd take it away. Just like he'd taken the first.

A smile crossed his face as he turned back around and looked at his captive. The forty-something woman looked back at him with desperate, wide cerulean eyes. It was all she could do.

He'd let her go. Someday. But for now, she had to suffer as much as her husband.