AN: For this chapter, I wanted to add a little backstory on why in later years, Lee hates Fred Fielder so much and a bit of foreshadowing to season one, since we're getting closer to that time frame.

January 16, 1980

"Mrs. King?" Byron Foster's voice sounded on the other end of Amanda's phone line.

After two weeks and endlessly fielding questions from the boys about when Daddy was coming home, she finally got the call she'd been waiting for. "Mr. Foster," she greeted the man on the phone. Her stomach clenched as she wondered what kind of news he had for her. Did Joe have this deadly virus? Was he calling to tell her that Joe would never come home again and that he would die in some faraway hospital? She was afraid to ask, but she steeled herself and asked anyway. "You have some news about Joe?"

"Yes. Good news," he emphasized. "They put him on a medical transport plane late last night. He'll be home in a couple of hours."

"Home?" she questioned. How was he going to react when he no longer had a home to return to?

"I mean, back to the States," Foster clarified. "He still has some healing to do from being shot, but he's stable enough to be moved and his test results showed no sign of infection."

"Oh, thank God." She breathed a sigh of relief. "When?"

"He should be at Parker General at around 7 or so tonight."

"Good. I'll be there." Amanda told him. "Thank you for letting me know, Mr. Foster."

"Was that about Joe?" Dotty inquired as Amanda hung up the phone.

Amanda nodded. "He's okay." She hurried to the refrigerator. "I'd better get the boys their dinner. Joe's going to be at the hospital at 7 and I want to be there."

"Hospital? But didn't you say he was okay?" Dotty asked worriedly.

"Well, Mr. Foster says he is, but like I told you, he was shot so he needs some recovery time." She took a deep breath as she gathered the things she needed for dinner.

"Let me help you," Dotty offered as she took her daughter's burden from her. She only wished she could take her emotional burden from her as well.

"Thank you, Mother." She leaned against the counter for support.

"You don't quite believe Mr. Foster, do you?"

Amanda turned to face her mother. "I just want to see Joe for myself. You know, so I can make sure he's okay; make sure that my boys aren't going to lose their father."

Dotty snorted. "If you ask me-"

"Mother, don't," Amanda warned. "I already know what you're going to say and please, just don't."

"It's your life, Dear." Dotty turned her attention to dinner preparations. "But you do need someone to watch the boys tonight if you want to go to the hospital. Maybe I have other plans."

"That's blackmail." Amanda was surprised at her mother.

"Maybe so, but I like to think of it as simply...a strong incentive. Or maybe a little give and take. I give you something, you give me something."

"Oh, Mother," Amanda groaned.

"Take it or leave it," Dotty stated firmly.

"You know, I'm sure Sandy would watch the boys. She's done it before."

"I'm sure she would, but that would upset the boys' routine, wouldn't it? I mean, if Joe's not going to be there until 7 tonight, who knows how late you'll be there visiting him. Definitely past the boys' bedtimes."

"Alright, Mother, you win. What do you want?"

"I just want for you to talk to me. I know this worrying about Joe has upset you. I'm just curious if it's upset you enough to have reconsidered the decision you made about him. I told you long ago that you needed to make a decision and stick to it and now..."

"You're worried that because I'm concerned about his health that I'll just forgive him again and go back on the plans I've made?"

"Precisely," Dotty answered succinctly.

"You don't have to worry about that, Mother. My decision was made when I couldn't get him to come home when I was in the hospital last year. If he can't be there for me for something as important as that...or like when Daddy died...or how he bailed on us when Phillip was sick. I just..."

"But you still love him, in spite of it all," Dotty chimed in. Off Amanda's perturbed look, she added, "Don't even try to deny it. It's been written all over your face these past two weeks since you spoke with Mr. Foster. The worry on you face made it quite clear."

Amanda let out a sigh. "Yes, I still love him and I would never want anything bad to happen to him, but I need a husband who will be there for me and for my children. I need...I need to feel the way I did when Joe and I were first together."

Dotty nodded in understanding. "You love him, but you're no longer in love with him," she surmised.

"How could I? How can a person still be in love with someone they can't trust?"

"You know, I can't help wondering if you wouldn't be having these feelings if you'd married Phillip's father instead."

"We'll never know, Mother. He's out of my life...for good."

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"Who the hell is this guy?" Lee cried in anger as he found yet another fallen colleague...Fred Fielder. While it was true that the guy bugged him, he'd never wished anything like this on him. It had been two weeks and two more agents had been killed, Fred the latest. That made five in just over a month, yet they were no closer to finding the killer. He knelt down to examine the scene when he was startled by his partner's booming voice.

"Call an ambulance now! He's still alive!"

Lee hurried to follow his partner's instruction, sprinting for the payphone on the corner. "Damn, damn, damn!" he cursed as he quickly dialed. He couldn't help feeling partially responsible since this was now his investigation and he'd gotten nowhere. The killer was good, he had to admit. He left no fingerprints, no fibers, no trace evidence whatsoever, just a trail of bodies. What he couldn't figure out though was his pattern. Why just one a week? If he just wanted agents dead and clearly he knew who they were, why wait so long between kills?

He finished his call as he continued to ponder the situation. It wasn't that he wanted to see more agents die, of course, but it was just strange that it was one per week. "Unless it isn't..." he mused. Maybe it wasn't just the Agency who was getting hit. After all, they weren't the only intelligence outfit in the world, not even in DC. He made a mental note to look into other murders to see if the other agencies had been hit too.

When he returned to his partner and their fallen fellow agent, he found that Andy had removed his suit jacket and was using it to apply pressure to Fred's wound. "Good thinking," he nodded to his friend.

"Just trying to slow the bleeding until the medics get here." He shook his head. "I don't get this at all. Why...? What the hell is going on here?"

"I think I may have an idea to the what, but not the why," Lee answered. "But I'll have to get back to the Agency to do some digging once we get him to a hospital."

Andy shook his head. "No. Go now. Divide and conquer. He doesn't need two of us to stay here with him. I'll ride with him in the ambulance and grab a cab back to the office later."

"Are you sure? You know how Smyth is about us being alone. That's what got Fred nailed."

"I won't be alone for long," Andy insisted. "Just go. Anything you can do to help us get this solved."

"You got it," Lee agreed as he started to walk back to his car. Still, he was having mixed feelings about this. While he was eager to begin his search while the idea was still fresh in his mind, he didn't feel right about leaving Andy alone. Something just didn't feel right. That's when it hit him. The guy never left any witnesses, so why wouldn't he have made sure that Fred was dead before leaving. "He didn't." Lee ran with all his might back to the scene just in time to hear shots ring out and ricochet off the nearby building.

"Lee, get down!" Andy shouted. "They're shooting at-"

"NO!" Lee screamed as he watched Andy fall, his warning to him dying on his lips as he slumped over. He tried to examine him, but another gunshot caused him to dart away to avoid being shot himself. He looked around wildly and tried to ascertain where the shots were coming from. The sound of wailing sirens interrupted his train of thought. He looked toward the street to see an ambulance, closely followed by a Metro police car and he ran to flag the ambulance down. When no more gunshots came, he determined that the killer must have heard the sirens too. He hurried back to his fallen partner just as the ambulance slowed and two paramedics hastily exited the vehicles. He checked for a pulse and found none. "No...Andy!" he moaned as he began CPR.

"Get out of the way," one of the medics yelled.

"He's my partner," Lee stated numbly and pulled his ID from his pocket.

The other medic nodded. "I understand, but you need to let us work." He gently nudged Lee to get him to move.

The whole scene played before Lee's eyes as if in slow motion. The medics checked Andy over and pronounced him dead on the scene, and then hurried to work on Fred to keep him alive. Lee argued with them that he wanted to ride with them to the hospital, but with two bodies, there wasn't room in the ambulance.

"We've radioed your superior," the officer from the local PD said. "I can give you a lift if you like. You shouldn't be driving in the state you're in." Lee nodded, but didn't say a word, so numb that he couldn't even think, let alone form words. It had been one thing to see Andy fall, another to hear him pronounced dead.

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At 7:30, Amanda was walking down the hall toward the room she'd been told was Joe's. As she reached her destination, she hesitated at the door when she heard voices...Joe's and Mr. Foster's.

"You gave us quite a scare," Foster was saying to Joe. "But from what the doctors here say, it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be."

"That's good news," Amanda interjected more cheerfully than she felt as she entered the room.

"Amanda," Joe greeted her with a smile.

"Joe."

"Mrs. King, it's nice to see you again," Foster said. "I should go and let you two lovebirds catch up."

Lovebirds? Amanda questioned in her head. If he only knew. Once he was gone, Amanda sat by Joe's bedside and looked him over, noting the sling running from his shoulder to his right arm. "Are you in a lot of pain?"

Joe laughed. "We haven't seen each other in months and that's what you lead with?"

"Well, what do you want me to say, Joe? It's hard to make conversation when we haven't seen each other in so long." There was so much she needed to tell him, but she just didn't know how. "Do you need anything?"

"Oh, I don't know...a kiss from my wife might be nice."

"No," Amanda answered adamantly.

"You're pissed," he guessed.

"No, Joe, I'm not. Not anymore. I was, but now I'm just...I'm done."

"Done?" He gaped at her. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I think you know." She looked down at her hands as she tried to find the right words to tell him what she was feeling.

"You're leaving me?"

"You're the one who keeps leaving me." She looked back up at him, tears in her eyes. "Joe, it's time. We don't make each other happy anymore and we haven't for a very long time. Each time you left, I tried to pretend that when you came home again, things would be fine. After your dad had his heart attack, I thought we were really making progress toward fixing what was wrong with our marriage."

"You mean, your lies?"

Amanda's eyes flared in anger. "Okay, now, I'm pissed. Don't you mean your lies? Your promises to me that you'd stay home with our family? That each time you left would be the last time?"

Joe sighed. "Okay, look. I admit that I've made mistakes, but you have too. For God's sake Amanda, you lied to me for the first three years of our marriage, passed off someone else's son as mine when you knew it wasn't true."

"I've told you again and again that I didn't know that Phillip wasn't yours until you did. We found that out at the same time."

"But you knew it was a possibility, Amanda. That whole time, you knew and you didn't say a word. I had to find out the hard way. Do you have any idea how much that hurt? I love Phillip with all my heart and to find out from strangers that I wasn't his father..." His voice broke and he was unable to continue.

A thought dawned on her then, clearer than it ever had before. Contrary to what she'd believed for years, it wasn't that Joe was unable to accept Phillip, knowing that he wasn't his son. It was her he didn't want to be around. "You still haven't forgiven me," she concluded.

"I've tried, Amanda. I have. I thought with time, I'd be able to, but every single time I came home, all we did was fight about how long I'd been away and you'd accusing me of staying away because I didn't love Phillip anymore and nothing could be further from the truth."

"Why didn't you ever just say so? We could've talked about it. Maybe we even could've worked through it." She shook her head in disbelief. Why was it now when their marriage was on the brink of ending, that they were having the most honest conversation they'd ever had? Not yelling, not fighting, just talking. If it wasn't such a sad situation, she'd have laughed at the irony.

"Do you really think we could have? We've hurt each other so much. I know I've hurt you-"

"In more ways than you know, Joe," she replied softly. "I know I behaved badly the last time you left, taking off the way I did and not even saying goodbye to you, but I was so hurt because...because I was pregnant. I'd just found out that day and I was so excited to tell you because we were finally on the verge of working things out...or so I thought." She looked down again, not able to meet his eyes as silent tears slipped down her cheeks.

"Pregnant?" Joe looked stunned, his eyes wide as he tried to process the information. "That was almost ten months ago. Are you...are you saying that we have another baby at home? That I missed the birth of my child?"

She finally looked up at him, brushed away the tears and shook her head slowly. "No, Joe. What you missed was the death of your child...our child. I lost the baby about two weeks after you left...and when no one could get in touch with you and you never came home, I...that's when I decided that I couldn't...we couldn't go on like this." She paused to take a breath before continuing. "I love you, Joe, and I always will, but we need to end things now before we hurt each other even more...or worse, hurt our children with our fighting."

Joe nodded in acknowledgement. "It's just not working, is it?"

"No, it's really not. You can't forgive me for keeping my fling with Lee to myself all those years ago and I can't forgive you for not being there for me when I needed you the most. Those things are always going to be there, keeping us from being truly happy together."

"You're right," Joe replied glumly. "Can I just ask you one question, though?"

"Anything, Joe," she responded gently and gave him a weak smile.

"It's probably none of my business, but if we...if we end things, are you going to go back to...him?"

"No, Joe. As I've told you for years, that was over a long time ago. In fact, I don't even know where he is anymore. The last time I heard anything from him was when he sent a gift for Phillip's birthday last year and that wasn't even for me. It was for Phillip."

"So, where do we go from here?"

Amanda shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe someday, we can still be friends. I don't want you completely out of my life. After all, we'll always be connected by the boys."

"Yes, we will. And maybe, I don't know..." He shrugged, but then winced in pain as he did so. "Maybe it'll give me the chance to be a better father to them without our issues getting in the way."

"Maybe," Amanda replied hopefully. She leaned in and kissed him softly. "It's worth a shot, right?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"Do you want me to sit with you for awhile? Keep you company?"

He nodded as she squeezed her hand lightly. "That'd be nice."

Amanda nodded. "I will then, but first, if you don't mind, I'm dying for a cup of coffee. Do you want anything?"

"Coffee would be good," he responded and released her hand.

"I'll be right back."

She hurried down the hall to the vending room and was startled by a loud thump when she entered and a frustrated growl of "Goddamn it!"

"Are you okay?" she asked in concern. When the man turned, she gasped in surprise, "You?" Her worry only increased when she saw the state Lee was in. He was red-eyed, his clothes covered in blood and frankly, he looked like he'd been through a war.

"Great! Just what this shitty day needed to make it even better," he snapped sarcastically. "What are you here for? Your old man knock you up again?"

"Ooohh, How dare you?" Amanda felt her temper rising again.

"Oh, wait, no. Why would you want that? You've already got the perfect life, right? With your house in the suburbs and your 2.5 kids. Why would you want anymore?"

"I have two children, Lee. You've spent enough time skulking around my house to know that."

"Skulking? You wanna talk about skulking?" He advanced on her. "How about when I was 'skulking' outside your hospital room last year...in the obstetrics wing, huh?" He reached for her and gripped her arms. "Are you gonna deny that you were there when I saw you with my own eyes?"

"Yes, I was there, but it's not what you think." She wrenched her arms out of his grasp. "I wasn't there having a baby. Yes, I was pregnant, but I was there because I lost the baby."

"Oh," was Lee's only response. Now he felt like an ass. "God, Amanda I'm sorry. I-I didn't know. When I saw you there, I just assumed... How did what's his name...Joe take it?"

"He wasn't there," she admitted honestly.

Lee snorted. "Figures."

Amanda wasn't sure what was wrong with Lee, what had made him so angry, but clearly something was bothering him. He was no longer, the kind, gentle man that she remembered. "Are you okay?"

"Me? I'm just perfect," he snarled.

"Clearly, you're not," she argued and reached for his arm in a gesture of comfort.

He yanked his arm away from her. "Don't, Amanda. I'm not one of your charity cases. I told you years ago that I didn't want you touching me again unless you were done with him!"

"I am done with him," she told him.

Lee grabbed her left hand. "Then tell me why you're still wearing his ring, huh? And what are you doing here anyway?"

"First of all, I'm still wearing the ring because we haven't officially filed for divorce yet and second, I'm here because he was shot on the job...in Haiti. I came here to see how he's doing. Even though, we're splitting up, he's still the father of my children."

"Child," he corrected. "One of your children is mine, remember?"

"Of course, I remember." She shivered a bit as she recalled that long ago night and the passion she'd felt for him. Joe's question about her going back to him now haunted her. She honestly hadn't considered it and she had been truthful with Joe about it, but now being face-to-face with Lee again, she wasn't so sure. "So, what are you doing here?" she inquired in an attempt to change the subject.

Lee swallowed hard. He still hadn't fully processed Andy's death yet. "A friend of mine was killed tonight and another's here in the hospital...well, co-worker really, but still...he's here and he's injured and I felt I owed it to him to...you know..."

"Yeah, I understand." She patted his arm. "I'm very sorry about your friend."

"Yeah, thanks." He clasped his hand with hers. "You...uh...you wanna sit down? Talk, maybe?"

"Um...I can't. I...uh...I just came by here to get some coffee. I promised Joe I'd sit with him for awhile so he won't be alone."

Lee let go of her hand abruptly. "Joe? The guy you're supposedly divorcing? Oh, no wait! That's right! You haven't actually filed yet. I should've known. You never change, do you?" He lobbed a kick at the trashcan and stormed out the door.

"Lee, wait!" She called after him, but he was already gone.

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When Lee arrived at his apartment after leaving the hospital, he immediately poured himself a double as he reflected on the events of the day. He downed it in two swallows and then wandered to his bedroom to strip off his sweat and blood-stained clothes, tossing them right into his trashcan. He padded barefoot to the bathroom to shower the stench of it all off of him.

How the hell had this day become the shit-storm that it had? First finding Fred near death, then Andy. He fought back tears as he thought of Andy putting his life on the line to warn him. An enormous wave of guilt washed over him as the shower washed over his body. If only he'd followed his gut instinct to stay with Fred and Andy, maybe he'd still be alive. If he'd found something on the killer...

Then there was Amanda. How could it be possible to have run into her just when he needed a friend the most, only to have fate say, "Nope, sorry, sucker. You can't have it." She may have been talking about divorce, but until he saw that she was no longer wearing a ring, he wasn't taking her word for it. He may have been around the block a few times, but he didn't mess with married women, especially one who'd rejected him to marry the man in question.

He turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and was just pulling on his robe when there was a knock on his door. "Now what?" he groused as he cinched the belt on his robe and stomped to the door. "What?" he snapped.

Francine held up a bottle of his favorite scotch. "I heard what happened and I thought you could use this."

"You're not wrong," he confessed as he let her in. "But I'm not looking for sympathy."

"I'm not here to give it," she countered as she walked to the bar and poured them both a drink. "Andy was my friend too, you know?" She handed him a glass.

"Friend? You had a damn funny way of showing it." He took a swig of the scotch as she sat down next to him.

"Come on, Lee. We all tease each other around there. You know that. It's how we stay sane."

"Yeah, maybe."

"I just thought you could use a friend. Someone who understands what it's like to lose someone on the job."

"You know. You're right," he agreed as he inched closer to her.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "You know, I could use a friend too."

"Yeah?" he said as he put his drink down and moved even closer.

"Yeah," she set her drink next to his and no more words were spoken as they fell into each other's arms.