Disclaimer: I do not own Crossing Jordan.

Note: Thank you, Mexwojo and faith4000, for your reviews. :)

I'd also like to thank the only two visitors to my profile who have actually voted. :)

I'm sorry this chapter is a little late, but I fell asleep last night. :) The last one is almost ready and will be up tomorrow.

To I., K. and S., three angels who have left this world much too soon.

***

"Go home."

Jordan all but jumped from her office chair, and Garret half-smiled. So absorbing the view at bustling Boston in an atypically warm October afternoon was that she hadn't noticed the Chief M.E. before he spoke.

"Nice day," he observed.

"Yeah," she said unenthusiastically, shooting a nasty look at the two days' worth of paperwork lying in front of her.

"I mean it, Jordan. You'll finish that tomorrow."

Her eyes widened in an almost child-like way, but narrowed almost instantaneously.

"Half an hour ago you almost chewed Nigel's head off for not finishing that report."

"I like to think of that as friendly advice to him to do his job instead of trying to replace the entire BPD lab," Garret deadpanned. "And you clocked so much overtime last week that it's practically illegal of me to keep you here."

This was a blatant lie, so she opened her mouth to protest but he forestalled her.

"Go home," he repeated in a manner which showed that this time he was not taking no for an answer, and she finally noticed the look in his eyes. It was the one he'd get when he was worried about Abby... and her. Her heart filled with gratitude. How lucky she was to have him! Even if Max was God knew where, she had a father right beside her.

To her horror, she felt the prickling of tears in her eyes. She quickly grinned widely.

"You know what," she said, getting up and taking her purse, "I might go for a walk."

They smiled at each other in understanding, and Jordan -- pretty uncharacteristically of her -- planted a small kiss on his cheek before breezing past him.

For hours she was roaming the streets, simply taking pleasure in the sunshine caressing her skin and the lightest breeze playing with her hair and her scarf. The sun was already a burning orange smudge on the horizon when she began to read street signs and look around her. She was hoping to find a Chinese restaurant as her stomach was starting to complain. She didn't find one, but she did find out that she was only two streets away from Boston Common. Her heart started fluttering like mad upon this realization. She drew in a deep breath. Disregarding the alarm bells going off in her head, she marched into the park.

She sat on the first bench and looked around.

'I was only twenty feet away from here that night.'

Oddly enough, this didn't send her to the edge of reason. On the contrary, her pulse steadied. She felt that the time had come. She had been running away from the memory, shunning away from anything that could evoke it and immersing herself in her work. That had to stop. Such a lifestyle was taking too high a toll.

'I want my old life back,' she thought and then almost laughed at the thought. 'Some life it was!'

But she did miss it. She would give anything to wake up and realize that the last ten days had never happened... She smiled a mirthless little smile. She had learned long ago, more than twenty years ago, that things like that didn't happen, no matter how much you wanted them to. In the end you had to face both this fact and those bad memories. And it seemed that this was this end.

Though her palms were rapidly turning into water and her heart was throbbing in her throat, she forced herself to go through the events of that night. Hoping they would help her heal, she didn't stop the tears from falling. She was going through everything again and again until she finally concluded, 'I kicked his ass.'

She made a pretty pitiful attempt at a smug smile. Kicking his ass was the least he had deserved. He was a bastard. Even if she had changed her mind in his very bedroom, he would not have the right to react like that. Period. She should have reported him. Her mouth twisted into an embittered smile. Having tagged along with detectives all these years, she had come across to a number of abuse victims. Almost all of them would at first refuse to report the crime, and she would tell them they had nothing to be ashamed about. She would tell them it hadn't been their fault, and she absolutely believed it. How had she come to believe that that night's event was her fault?

It wasn't her fault. It wasn't. Just like it hadn't been her fault when her place got broken into almost a year ago. She had known it then and she knew it now. No matter what her behavior might have been like, Pete had had no right to treat her in that way. Because of him her last ten days been hell at its finest – she couldn't think about anything else, she couldn't eat, she could sleep but hadn't been feeling the slightest desire to because of the nightmares.

Nightmares... She shuddered. She hated them most fervently. The first ones had started right after her mom's death. After that, whenever they appeared, she knew she was dangerously close to a breakdown. This time was no exception.

"There were a couple of new ones, though," she said quietly to herself. "Like that one with my old boyfriends... Now, that was a good one!"

Against her will, she laughed out loud. Tyler was the last guy in the world who would do such a thing. Well, okay, Ty was the next-to-the-last one, and Woody was the last one.

Woody... What an awful sense of timing that man had! Well, to tell the truth, hers wasn't any better. Maybe they just weren't meant to be. Or maybe they should just try harder. He had said he loved her...

She shrugged these thoughts off. Right now she didn't really have the strength to analyze their relationship. The most important thing now was that she'd become conscious of the fact that she wasn't unworthy of Woody or any other man because of what had happened with Pete. She was at peace with herself. Maybe she couldn't have her old life back, but she could have a new one, a life liberated from the burden of the past. She would never forget, just as she would never forget many other ugly things that had happened to her. But she wouldn't let them rob her off the joy of days and years yet to come, either. Her life was far from over.

She got up from the bench, smiling at the moon. It was late, but she still had the time to make some amends.

"Jordan!"

"I brought you something." She smiled almost sheepishly, waving a small paper bag. "It can rain a lot on the West Coast in November, ya know, and I wouldn't want you to catch a cold and miss my yearly evaluation."

The little man grinned and moved from the door to let her in.