DonPOV

I sat in the waiting room for what seemed like forever. I'd always hated hospitals. The smell. The doctors who always told you half-truths to make it sound better than it actually was. The waiting. Each second that dragged past felt like a millennia and I tried to pass the time as best as I could manage. I picked up a magazine once in a while and let my eyes wander over the words, reading them, but not really comprehending their meaning, then I'd toss it aside and pick up a different one. At some point in time, I got up, mumbling something about coffee. I moved off in an unknown direction, hoping I'd find something. As luck would have it, I discovered a small coffee machine with styrofoam cups and plastic stir straws.

I heard someone approach behind me, and I turned, styrofoam cup in hand. It was Danny.

"You okay?"

"Are you really asking me that question?"

"Yeah."

I sighed, running a hand through my short hair before pouring myself a steaming cup of coffee. I then turned to face the wall, and not looking at Danny, leaning on it with one arm. I needed to just focus on my words. "I don't know, Danny. It's... I've thought she was dead for almost a year, you know? And know they're telling me that she's alive. I just don't..." I paused, recollecting my scattered thoughts. "I don't know what to think."

Danny grabbed himself a cup of coffee in silence, for which I was glad. He loved Jess like a sister. Worry and concern were written all over his features. I needed a minute of silence to think.

I still had no idea what to think or what to do. She's alive. Maybe. I started doubting the images that I saw of her, like I saw some sort of illusion. Was it her? Was it some random person?

"I really wish I had some awesome advice to give you, but I don't." Danny said suddenly, interrupting my stampeding thoughts after taking a sip of the blazing hot coffee. He walked a step until he was behind me and paused, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder, that said what he couldn't convey with words. He sighed. "I'll see you," Then he walked away.

JessPOV

I gained a sense that I could open my eyes before I could actually opened them. I was slowly regaining a sense of my body. I could feel my toes, my legs, my hips, my shoulders although I never actually moved around. I felt a buzz in my brain that I assumed was painkillers.

Part of me wanted to open my eyes, but the other just said 'What's the point?' I didn't know what I'd do from here. Shay was dead. Sarah Barnes was exposed. Jessica Angell was raped. Andy Anderson and Amy Baron were dead. The two people who'd made my life worth living the past year were gone. Their existence snuffed out by one angry human being.

Amy. I was supposed to protect her. It's your fault. For once, I didn't try to ignore my brain's hissing messages. It was my fault. I'd taken Amy under my wing, sworn to protect her. She was so young. Her whole life ahead of her. A life cut short because I didn't protect her. If I had gone in and gotten her a few minutes before, maybe she wouldn't be dead now. She'd be here. With me.

And Andy. He was my trusted partner for nearly a year. The only person I could trust before Amy came into the picture. He'd dutifully kept me safe time and time again, and I'd failed when it had counted the most. He died saving me. I would've gladly let Shay take my life if that meant that those two wonderful people could've gone on living their lives. They sacrificed themselves for me. I had two lives, two innocent lives hanging over my head. Their blood was on my hands. It was my fault.

I opened my eyes.

I found myself in the exact same room that I'd been in eight months ago. Room ICU405. The bed beside me still sat empty. Except this time I wasn't impatient to get out of the bed. I didn't even know if it was worth it any more. I don't even know if Don was over my death. With someone else. The thought made me want to cry again, but I held the tears back. Enough had been shed the past days. I wondered if I even had any more left.

It was hard to believe I'd been exactly here eight whole months ago. So much had happened. I'd lived, I'd lost. Mostly lost. I was a totally different person when I'd blindly agreed to take that undercover job all those months ago.

This time, Dr. Florek showed up earlier, rather than me having to wait for her. "Hello, hon. How are you feeling?"

"Okay, which is an improvement." I said, smiling. But the smile felt foreign on my face. Like someone had glued a fake mouth over my own, making me smile.

"I understand." She checked a few monitors, adjusted a couple dials and then spoke again. "Look, you've literally got a whole crowd of people out there, waiting." She stopped and looked me square in the eyes. "Jessica, the man who brought you in is worried out of his mind. Is this that Don that you asked for?"

"...Yes." I replied weakly, not quite believing what she was saying. He was worried about me. The old Jessica began to take over. Of course he's worried about you. That's why you love him.

"Do you want to see him?"

"Yes. Just him." I answered immediately this time. I just needed to be near him. To feel his hand in mine. To feel his arm around me. To hear his voice comforting me.

Dr. Florek nodded, and patted my arm. I saw sympathy there, and that made me smile at her. It felt a little less foreign this time.

DonPOV

Dr. Florek entered the waiting room, and I stood. "How is she?"

"Awake, lucid, and talking," she answered. I wanted to weep with relief. She was okay. She was okay. She was okay.

"She's asking for you," Dr. Florek said quietly, looking at me.

"What?"

"She asking for you. Only you." She said those last two words with a sympathetic glance to the other people in our group, but I hardly noticed.

I wanted to dance and sing. She was alive and was asking for me. I just nodded, keeping my relief locked inside as I followed Dr. Florek through the doors that led to the ICU. My mind was awhirl with emotions. Happiness, most of all, that Jess was alive. Overwhelming grief and pain at her condition. And burning curiosity at where she had been the last eight months. We all thought she was dead. Her family had scattered her ashes near a small, beautiful creek in Montreal. I'd been there.

She stopped outside a glass-walled room. "This is her room. I'll leave you two alone." With that, Dr. Florek left. I faced the door, and put my hand on the knob. With a deep, calming breath, I turned the knob and opened the door.

She was on a typical hospital bed, with the plastic bars on the sides, lumpy pillows and stark white sheets. She looked much better, having all of the blood washed off of her. Her arms rested by her sides, both wrists in plastic braces that went from her hand to just below her wrist. She wore a ridiculous hospital gown with purple dinosaurs on it, and I imagined she hadn't appreciated that very much. Her eyes were shut, and her breathing was even. But there was no doubt about it that this was Jessica Angell. Her hair, though shorter, was the same dark brown that I'd come to love. Her face looked the same, the way her cheekbones cut across her face, the gentle slope of her chin...

But even as she looked so familiar, she looked like a stranger. There were not many times when Jess had looked fragile to me. She was always strong, witty, and in-control. But now she looked a lot like a porcelain doll, and the slightest brush of the fingertips could make her shatter into a million fragments. She looked gaunt, as though she wasn't eating. Her skin had been lightly tanned when I'd last seen her, and had deepened into a light shade of bronze. But there was an underscore of white to her tanned complexion, almost as thought someone had wrapped transparent, orange plastic around her pale body. Dr. Florek had warned me about this as she'd led him to her room, saying that it was an aftereffect of the blood loss, and would not be permanent, but it still scared me. The gashes and cuts that had looked so horrific the night before were now cleaned and treated, but still held a mysterious story. A lot of the wounds had to be stitched, and the wounds held together by stitching stood out plainly against her paled complexion. It was as though she was a cloth doll, broken too many times to repair. The comparison made me shiver.

I assumed she had fallen asleep from the time Dr. Florek had left, so I then glanced around the room. I found a plastic lawn chair and dragged it over next to her bed. I took one of her hands in mine, being careful not to jostle her newly-set wrists. I laced my fingers with hers, feeling that same familiarity of her bare skin of her fingers. It was then I noticed the bruises. They flowered all along her paled flesh, some yellow, some deep purple and black. I noticed them trailing up her arms until they disappeared beneath the grown.

There were handprints on her neck. They were clearly visible, the darkest of all the bruises. Someone with huge hands had tried to strangle her and left ominous black bruises against her pale flesh.

"Jess?" I began, not sure how to even begin. "I... I want you to know that I love you. More than you'll ever know. I never got a chance to tell you, but..." I trailed off and picked up a new topic. "And everyone waiting for you in the waiting room loves you too. We need you back. I need you back." My voice sounded strenuous, even to my own ears, and I was about to start another sentence when I felt her fingers squeeze around mine.

"Don," Her voice sounded little raspy, but it could've been a choir of angels singing as far as I was concerned. (No pun intended.)

Her beautiful, dark brown eyes opened and her face swiveled to face mine. That's when I saw the white scar on her cheek. It was barely noticeable against her almost snowy skin, but I noticed it because of how well I knew her face. I'd studied it so many times, I knew her face better than I knew my own. Then, it fell into place for me.

Sarah Barnes. The FBI. The guns. The drugs. How tense she'd been when I'd frisked her. The conversation in the squad car. Why she wouldn't look up during the interrogation.

Sarah Barnes had been Jessica Angell.

JessPOV

I heard someone enter the room, and my mind prepared for immediate attack. It was in defensive all the time, and every doctor that went to poke and prod at my injuries often ended up with a bloody nose from a subconscious flail of my legs or arm.

I was tensing, waiting for the pain of a blow, but it never came. I heard a chair being dragged up, and surprisingly, I didn't flinch away. Instead of the pain I'd been expecting, I felt gentle hands enclosing mine. Hands I would've known anywhere. Hands that I could've picked out of a crowd of a million, blindfolded. When I heard his voice, my soul started to slowly rise to the surface, trying to break through the barricade that my mind had built up after Shay raped me that had kept my soul at bay. My body was scared. I was scared too until I realized it was him. It would always be him.

"Jess, I... I want you to know that I love you. More than you'll ever know. I never got a chance to tell you, but... And everyone waiting for you in the waiting room loves you too. We need you back. I need you back."

I felt tears prickle my eyelids at the tenderness in his words. He loved me. Before I'd been shot, we'd never really said it out loud before. It was always just there when we were together, not trying to raise it's head or cause trouble. Even when we'd been partners, I think we loved each other. No words really needed to be said to convey it. It was always there. And obviously, it still was. Relief washed over me, and the sensation of having a bucket of water dumped over me ensued. He loved me. The angry voice in my brain started to make complaints, but I shoved it down, and it shut up. He loved me.

I squeezed my fingers on his, letting him know that I heard him. "Don," I managed, surprised at how weak my voice sounded. Weak with relief. With the tidal wave of emotions that hit me. When I opened my eyes, I had an overwhelming feeling that everything would be right in the world because Don was here with me.

His icy blue eyes were filled with warmth, relief, and love. My favorite smile crossed his face, illuminating it and I was lost in the wonders of his eyes, and the whole world that lay behind them. I could've stared at him forever, mesmerized by the symmetry of his smile, the way the right side pulled up almost imperceptibly higher when she smiled, the way the corners of his eyes crinkled, but his words brought me out of my state of transience. "Hey, you." he said softly, the low timbre of his voice sending shivers down my spine. Everything about him stirred feelings that hadn't been touched in a long time.

I gave a full smile in return, meaning it this time. It felt good to smile, particularly at him. "Hey." I wanted to giggle at our informal greetings.

We just sat like that for a few minutes, each of us just taking each other in. I noticed only a few differences. He looked tired- perceptible bags hung under his gorgeous eyes, and a small crease between his eyebrows indicated he was worried about something. I realized it was me and squeezed his hand again, not knowing what to say.

"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say here." Don said, giving me a wry smile.

"It's not like this happens everyday."

"You're right."

He paused and his hand gently grazed an unbruised portion of my cheek. My body instinctively stiffened, but did not flinch away from his touch. He immediately noticed and his hand dropped. I could see hurt in his eyes, and I instantaneously felt sorry. "I'm sorry, I-"

He held up a hand, silencing me with a look of his blue eyes. "No, I am. I have no idea what happened to you or how you're even here right now." He let go of my hand, preparing to sit back, but I immediately reached for him again. His hand felt too good in mine to let it go. He realized what I was trying to do, so he laced our fingers back together, and I relaxed at his gentle touch. His other hand found its way to mine, and began drawing small patterns on the back of it, and that soothed me further. After being deprived of him for so long, the nerve endings in my had were set ablaze at his touch- in a good way. "Jess, I..."

I could see that he had no idea how to even approach this situation, so I decided to help him out. Tearing my gaze away from him, I relaxed back on the bed, staring at the white paneled ceiling. "I woke up in this exact room, exact same bed. Kind of spooky, I know. Dr. Florek comes in and tells me what happened. It mixed up my intestines, tore a few arteries, ripped a hole in my stomach, and shredded one of my ovaries." I felt Don's hands tighten around mine in response to the last statement, but I plowed on, trying to be fearless. "I tell her I want to see you, and then she's all, Oh, there are some guys from the FBI here to see you. So they come in, and tell me that they want me to go undercover with the Russian gang. I was going to refuse, I was saying that I had a great life, a great job. Then they gave me some story about how no one ever survives a shot from a Desert Eagle," I saw confirmation in Don's eyes when I glanced over at him. Like hell they don't survive. "and that there wouldn't be another opportunity to create a totally untraceable fake identity for the next few years, and that would delay the whole mission. The gang could put down more roots. Sell more drugs. Kill more people." I took a calming breath.

"It seemed selfish of me to refuse and let more innocent people suffer. So I agreed, and as soon as I got out of the hospital, I met my undercover partner, got a makeover, got debriefed, and bam. I was Sarah Barnes."

Tears began to pool in my eyes as I remembered Andy. "My partner's name was Andy Anderson, and he always reminded me a lot of Ace Ventura," and I went on to describe Andy and our 'adventures'. When I told him about Shay's first, failed attempt to rape me, I felt Don's hands quaking, and I looked over to see him with his eyes closed, taking deep, calming breaths. I could almost hear his teeth gritting together and his murderous thoughts.

Then I told him about Amy. Amy who died under my watch. Amy who was my responsibility. Amy who trusted me. Amy who I let down. I had to stop telling my story because my sobbing was so violent, I had to sit up and slump over, and I felt pain in my ribs, but I ignored it. I felt Don's arms encircle me, and he kept saying the same thing, over and over and over. "It wasn't your fault."

I began to sob harder when the truth of his words really hit me. It wasn't my fault. The realization hit me like a blast of wind to the face when I realized it. It really wasn't my fault. I hadn't killed her. Shay had. I hadn't been the one to strangle the life out of her. Shay had.

One of Don's hands rubbed my back in slow, deliberate circles, the other smoothed my hair back in a soothing, repetitive motion. I tried talking again when I was describing what he did to Amy, but my voice came out broken and stuttering, "I'm s-s-sorry, I c-can't..."

I leaned all of my weight into Don, my fingers grasping as the fabric of his shirt, rumpling it between my fingers.

"It's okay, Jess. It's okay. You're safe now."