AN: Spoilers for/tie-in with When Mary Met Marshall.

Many thanks to Roar for beta-ing this chapter. I've rewritten a couple of sections since, so any mistakes that remain are solely my own.

Mary swore quietly as she hung up the phone.

The call from Marshall had held so much potential. He could so easily have been calling to tell her one of her witnesses was dead, there'd been a major security breach or that they were being sent somewhere on short notice. Anything to get the adrenaline flowing.

Her life had been routinely dull for the last couple of weeks. She was actually starting to miss Eleanor. She hadn't had a decent fight since before she was shot, and that had been with Marshall and not of the fun variety. Raph had been tiptoeing around her since she got home, but they hadn't actually fought. She had spent so long longing for a break from all the conflict and turmoil in her life, but once she actually had peace for a short space of time, she found she got bored.

So, when Marshall had called, she had been hoping for some action. She longed for the rush, the sharpening of the mind and the chance to forget for a while that she had been shot – something she was reminded of every time she looked in Raph's eyes. Instead she got a break-in at Mr and Mrs Happy Kitty's house. Just what she needed. The perfect couple, with their hair stroking and constant smiles. The perfect picture of what her life was in danger of becoming.

She cursed her luck. She cursed Marshall for dragging her into a mess with his stupid witnesses. Then, she cursed the idiot that had broken into their stupid house on her afternoon off. And then, she cursed the fact that she still needed to take afternoons off or risk turning into a gibbering fool in the evening.

She was still cursing - she'd reached Carmello for shooting her in the first place - when she pulled up outside the Sunshine Building and Marshall slipped into the car. Once she had a receptive audience, she started again; out loud.

Her mood improved when she saw all was not well in Happy Kitty Land. The sight of the usually happy couple arguing balanced out her universe, providing discord where calmness usually reigned, the perfect counterbalance to her too-peaceful life.

As always when she saw Henry and Claudia, her mind turned to the start of hers and Marshall's relationship.

xxx

She'd been in Albuquerque for three weeks when she came to her senses. She blamed the air – it was doing something to her mind like a weird, free-to-inhale drug that she just couldn't get enough of.

The first couple of weeks had been fun, teasing Marshal Marshall – that would never get old - as he took her on witness visits and explained procedure to her in his prissy way. He had taken it in stride, answering her back occasionally and just putting up with her more than anyone else had up to that point.

But his patience had obviously run out. He'd been distant all week and now he had been completely absent for the last two days. Mary had tried to ask Stan where he was, but his cagey answer left her confused and wondering if she had driven another person away.

It was late at night and Mary sat contemplating her dilemma. Should she go pick her car up from the parking facility in Baltimore where she'd left it and try to get back on the Carson Miller pursuit? She could find a way back onto the team, she was sure. But did she even want to go back to living out of her Probe? At least that never let her down. Or should she go pick up her car and bring it back to Albuquerque and find somewhere more permanent than the crappy motel she'd been staying in? What did she care about the stupid challenge Marshall had thrown at her anyway?

As she mulled over her options, the door to the office suddenly swung open and Marshall strode in.

"Is Stan here?" he demanded.

Mary shook her head.

Marshall paced round the room a few times, the tension radiating off him. On one of his laps, Mary caught his attention. A sly grin crept into his eyes and he perched on the edge of her desk.

"So," he drawled, "How are you liking Albuquerque?"

Mary recognised the opening as a prelude to being hit on.

"Oh, you know, it's fine if you don't mind living miles from civilisation, in the middle of the freaking desert, with no decent bars. Seriously, are all the bars here occupied by small-minded locals, obsessed with guns and the wild west? I'm including the local PD, by the way, who seem to spend all their time playing cowboys and Indians with the locals," she said, clearly including him in her generalisation.

"Aren't you having any fun?"

"I've having plenty of 'fun'," she bristled at the implied criticism. "Are you?"

"Not enough. Come on."

"Where?"

"Nope, no questions. Just get your coat, we're going out."

xxx

Marshall took her to a bar in a part of the Old Town that she would never have found by herself. The atmosphere was lively, but not so loud that you couldn't have a conversation. Marshall led the way to the bar and ordered two shots and two beers. He downed his shot before she had even picked hers up.

Normally, Mary would have seen that as a challenge for her to keep up, but something in the way he was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for a refill told her he was temporarily oblivious to her presence.

"Tough day?" she asked when he'd downed the second shot and started on the beer.

Marshall shot her a look.

"No questions," he said.

"Fine." Mary sipped her beer as she looked around the bar.

They sat silently at the bar and drank their beers. Marshall relaxed slightly – the first two shots had taken the edge off and he was now enjoying his beer at a more leisurely pace. He was no longer thrumming with excess energy. He gazed around the room noticed the pool table standing empty at the other end of the room.

"Wanna play?" he asked, nodding toward the table.

"Actually, since you've been such scintillating company so far, I thought I'd just head home." Mary stood and drained her bottle to emphasise her point.

Marshall grabbed her as she went to leave.

"I'm sorry. I've had a crap couple of days. Come on. One game."

Mary stared at him a moment, trying to work him out.

"Okay, but the no questions rule has to go."

Marshall nodded, "I can go one better than that. Do you want to make it interesting?"

Mary followed him to the table, asking, "Interesting how?"

Marshall grinned.

"Answer per ball?"

"Huh?"

"For every ball that's potted, you have to answer a question."

"You're on."

xxx

"Why'd you want to come out tonight?" Mary asked as she stood up from breaking to watch two balls sail into pockets.

"Crap week."

"That's a lame answer. Especially as it was a two ball question!"

Marshall smiled sadly as he realised she was right; she did deserve a better answer. "One of my witnesses died. Was murdered, actually."

Mary didn't look up from the shot she was taking, although she tensed slightly. Another ball dropped into a pocket. "Security breach?"

"No, it was unrelated to their past. It was too unprofessional to be a hit. And it was the witness' wife. If you can get close enough for that kind of hit, why not just take him out?"

"True." Mary lined up her next shot. "Did you catch the guy?"

"Yeah," Marshall sighed. The weariness in his voice made Mary look up and she missed her next shot. As she handed over the one cue they had found that wasn't warped, she took a moment to study her partner.

"It was the husband, wasn't it?"

Marshall didn't answer as he bent to take his shot. He struck the cue ball firmly and watched it collide with the four ball, change direction and glance off the seven that had been hovering near the middle pocket. He didn't ask his question straight away, taking another shot first. Only when the four had also been removed from the table did he turn back to Mary.

"Why is that your first assumption?"

"It's always the husband."

"He had an alibi," Marshall told her. Mary didn't look convinced, so Marshall continued, "He was picking their twelve year old son up from school at the time. He drove them to a sporting goods store and bought Jonny a new pair of sneakers. There was a time stamp on the receipt. Do you still suspect him?"

Mary went to answer then realised that he was testing her. She gave the question a few more seconds thought but didn't change her answer.

"Yeah. I bet that was the first time he'd picked his son up in years."

Marshall nodded and turned back to the table. The six ball flew into the pocket with more force than was necessary. "He still had an alibi for the time of death."

"They're never accurate," Mary dismissed Marshall's logic, knowing that her instinct was right.

Marshall potted the nine off the eight and gestured for Mary to rack up the next frame.

"You're right. It wasn't accurate enough." Marshall drained his beer and went to the bar to get another round.

When he returned, Mary was getting ready to break again.

"Why are you so cut up about this?" she asked once she'd sunk a couple of balls. The lightning speed of the question and answer session was slowly fading as the questions got more serious and more personal than those in the first few frames.

"He killed his wife, then went and picked his son up from school to give himself an alibi. He let his son walk in on his mother's body to move suspicion away from himself. What sort of parent does that?"

Mary had no answer. She potted another ball and asked, "What's going to happen to him?"

"He's already back in Chicago and the knife with his fingerprints on is with the local DA."

"I meant what's going to happen to the kid?"

"He's with his aunt and uncle. Beyond that, I don't know." Marshall took a couple more sips of his beer, watching Mary play as he struggled with the question that had been plaguing him since he had tracked down the murder weapon. "Do you think someone can recover from that sort of thing? From knowing that, not only was your dad a criminal, but he also killed your mom?"

Mary ignored the fact that Marshall hadn't potted anything as it was still her turn and answered anyway.

"I don't think that's the sort of thing you ever get over. But that doesn't mean that you don't have good days where life is normal and you can forget for a while just how screwed up your family is."

Marshall took the cue from Mary as she fouled her next shot and asked, "How'd you know so much about this?"

"Experience."

Marshall paused before taking his shot. "Oh, yes, I forgot about your family. Sorry." He took his shot and potted the ball without much thought – his mind was still on Mary and her...unusual...family situation. She hadn't mentioned them since arriving in Albuquerque. That alone was enough to make him curious.

"What made you tell me about your family...er...business? It doesn't seem like something you'd share when you first meet people."

Mary shrugged as she watched him line up the next shot. "I tell everyone that. You were just the first to take me seriously." She took a swig of her beer. "Everyone else assumed I was joking."

"Ah, thank you Freud," Marshall said as he watched a ball disappear into the corner pocket.

"Nice shot," Mary acknowledged.

"Thanks."

Marshall lined up another shot. Mary waited nervously; she knew just were the conversation was headed next. She closed her eyes as she heard the tell-tale thunk of a ball dropping into the pocket. Marshall didn't disappoint.

"How old were you when your dad left?"

"Six." She took another swallow of beer for liquid courage. "He left two days before my seventh birthday."

"Do you miss him?" Marshall was careful to keep his eyes on the table as he asked his questions. Something told him that if he gave Mary any excuse to avoid this conversation, she would, and that included him missing a shot or looking at her in the wrong way.

"Yeah, I miss him," she exhaled, surprisingly relieved to finally admit it to someone. "Some days it's just there in the background. We lived so long without him, it's hard to remember those days what it was like when he was there. But other days, there's this huge hole in my life and nothing I do can fill it."

"Have you tried to find him?"

Mary shook her head. As she did so, her hair fell out of the hairband she'd loosely tied it back with at the start of the game.

"Why not?" Marshall asked as he bent to line up what should have been the final shot of the match. He took his time, not wanting to miss and give Mary a chance to avoid the question. Taking his time proved to be fatal. To see what was taking so long, Mary moved round the table slightly, hovering at the edge of Marshall's vision. As Marshall drew the cue back to take the shot, Mary reached up to tie her hair back. The motion of her arms above her head, made her top ride up just enough to expose a pale line of flesh above the waistband of her jeans, right at Marshall's eye height.

It was too late, Marshall had already struck the cue ball. He watched the white sail past the nine ball and disappear into the corner pocket.

Mary smirked in triumph.

"Four – six," she pointed out, quite unnecessarily.

xxx

Mary smiled as she recalled that night. She hadn't let him live down his defeat for months afterwards. It would have been longer if she had known what had distracted him at the crucial moment, but he never told her.

It would take her another 18 months before she trusted him enough to tell him any of the many reasons why she hadn't tried to find her dad, but something about the conversation that night stuck in her mind and would surface every time she contemplated leaving Albuquerque.

Seeing Marshall's pain and confusion at the idea that someone could use their child that way had struck a cord in Mary.

She couldn't leave after that. Marshall needed her, even if he didn't know it. He needed her to stop him getting lost in his naive world where everything was sunshine, laughter and worked out for the best. He needed her to guide him back down to Earth safely, rather than letting him plummet in freefall when his world and the real world collided. He was too sensitive, he needed to build up some callouses to protect him from life. His perfect world needed some confusion and she and her all-too-messy life could provide that in spades.

Now, just over six years later, he had built up a tougher exterior, but his sensitivity remained underneath. Mary had long since stopped trying to remove it completely. She had learnt to see its, and his, value and worked hard to protect him from some of the more brutal truths of life, the way she had with Brandi as a child.

He, in turn, had shone a light on some of the more fun and positive things in life, showing her the world wasn't as bad as she thought it was. He had given her a way to reconnect to people at a time when she thought she was beyond hope. She had mellowed and given humanity a second chance. So far, he had yet to let her down. When everything around her seemed to crumble, he would be there, right next to her, pointing out the beauty to be found in the ruins or explaining why it was entropically inevitable and she shouldn't blame herself.

He'd been challenging her deepest held self-beliefs from day one. Sometimes it was outright, laying down the gauntlet and standing back to see if she would pick it up. Most of the time, though, it was simply his unending belief in people that forced her to look at the world anew, through less jaded eyes.

When outsiders asked how she and Marshall had met, or when they started working together, Mary would reply with a tale of a FTF manhunt and three-day transport from hell. But if Marshall was there, they would share a secret smile, a look, a subtle movement that would go unnoticed by the questioner, but that would acknowledge the truth between them. For they may have started working together after moving Henry and Claudia, but their true partnership had begun that night in the bar.

The following day, Marshall had strolled into the office and pulled a file out of his filing cabinet. He had thrown it causally at her and told her not to let anyone get killed. He had still accompanied her on her first visit to Scott and Chris Worley, but mostly to introduce her as their new Marshal. A couple of months later, he had let her take point on welcoming their newest witness into the program.

Mary hated to admit it, but Marshall had made a good instructor. He ignored several of the training procedures when he realised her experience was far superior to the fictional Marshal in the manual. Yet he didn't give her free reign to wreak havoc on witnesses, as she could now admit she probably would have done.

His current supervision of her rankled, but she understood the necessity of it. He knew her better now, so he let her carry on as she would normally, only stepping in when he sensed she was approaching the edge. She had been grateful for his intervention a couple of times on regular witness visits. The first had been, coincidently, with Scott and Chris. She had been demanding answers about Chris' gambling, when a sudden wave of longing for her dad had passed over her. Her concentration had slipped and, from the confused expressions, she had said something incomprehensible.

Marshall had stepped in, with his, "What I believe my impatient friend means, is..." and the conversation had continued without anyone commenting on her lapse.

Similar lapses had occurred when she was tired, mostly in and around the office but a couple of times at home as well. In the office, Marshall and Stan had just laughed at her, not unkindly, until she demanded to know what she had actually said. Marshall had told her each time and she had laughed with them. At home, there was no laughter when she substituted words, just looks of horror and despair. The welling tears in her mom's eyes and the pitying look from Raph only strengthened her desire to get better.

She wanted her aphasia gone so she could go back to normal. She wanted her independence back. She didn't want to have Marshall supervise her. She didn't want to be tiptoed around at home. She didn't want to be the subject of concerned glances. She didn't want to walk into a room only to have a conversation suddenly stop.

Raph's acceptance of her scar had led her to believe he would be able to cope with mental injury as well, so she had increased her hours at work. The longer hours meant she was more tired when she got home and more likely to slip an incorrect word into a sentence. The first time, Raph was understandably shocked - he hadn't had to face that side of her injury until then. But his dismay hadn't faded with repetition and she was back to concentrating on her speech all the time at home.

That made her more likely to slip at work, where she didn't care what Marshall thought. That had the side effect of making Marshall think her aphasia was worse than it was and so he still insisted on accompanying her on witness assignments, which included dragging her along on his.

Mary started her litany of curses again as they drove back to the office to check the Carson Miller angle of the break in. At least if Miller was involved, she might get to see some action, might get to prove to Marshall that she was okay and might get to finally catch that bastard after he had eluded her almost seven years ago.