Garibaldi had meant to chat with Kitt and see how the computer was doing this morning, but a comm call at the crack of dawn had kept him from doing that. All he could offer on the way out the door was 'have a good day' and 'I'll keep in touch', two things he doubted Kitt would do.

That was one more thing to haunt him today. His other ghosts included the fact that Londo had told everyone about his lucky streak at the casino last night and that damn interrogation of Simon Holt that still needed to happen.

It didn't make any sense. Normally, he was great at taking things in stride, but today, everything seemed to be getting to him.

Oh, and all of his security heads were asking how he had come to the brilliant deduction that Holt was a first-time offender and were asking for justification. Justification he didn't have, because he wasn't the one to come up with the conclusion in the first place.

He was tempted to comm Kitt. He bit back the temptation, though. First of all, how would he be able to explain to his security heads about Kitt? 'Hey guys, I found this computer in the dumpster. Turns out he's a really neat guy and a brilliant investigator'?

Second of all, he wasn't sure if Kitt would even want to be bothered about the case again. Not with the way things had gone last night.

Garibaldi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and refocused on the net searches he had been scanning through. It was exactly the kind of search history you would expect from a lonesome guy in his mid-twenties- almost entirely comprised of porn.

At this point he just wanted to get up and punch a wall.

Maybe he was in the right headspace for that interrogation after all. The angrier he was at the perp, the more successful his threats were.

He got up from his chair in security central and made his way to the brig. The cold, grey hallway lined with armored doors was more than a familiar sight. Two guards were posted outside of Holt's room. Garibaldi came up to them.

"I'd like to ask him a few questions, if you don't mind."

The guards stepped aside. One of them inputted a code and the door opened. That one stayed outside, while the other followed Garibaldi in.

Simon Holt was sitting on the thin and rickety bed. As Garibaldi came in, he smiled.

"There you are, Chief. I was hoping I hadn't scared you off for good." He said.

"You're the one who should be scared." Garibaldi countered.

"Why should I be? I still have friends."

"Who are these friends?" Garibaldi shouted.

"Why do you ask? Hoping to make a few of your own?"

"What group are you in? Home Guard? In case you forgot, I kicked Home Guard straight out of here." Garibaldi pressed on.

Holt laughed. "No, not the Home Guard. Believe it or not, I got no problem with the aliens."

That made sense. Holt's net searches and preference of. . . erotic media supported that.

Garibaldi returned his focus. "Then why are you trying to blow the station to smithereens?"

Holt returned nothing but a smile.

"You should really take this more seriously." Garibaldi brought his voice back down. "You know what the penalty for treason is, right? This far out into space, it's too expensive to ship you back home. You're gonna get spaced. You know what that's like?"

Holt gestured for him to continue.

"We're gonna lock you in the airlock. The doors will close. Then the other one opens. Thirty seconds of the most pain and agony you'll ever feel will begin. Your blood will boil, your eyes will burst from their sockets-"

"That's what will happen when the hull is breached, right?" Holt said with a wink.

Garibaldi froze. Anger boiled within him and it threatened to spill all over. He balled his fists. Combinations of the nastiest words he knew formed in his mind but he bit his tongue.

"It won't look too good on a certain command staff, now would it?" Holt continued.

"The hell is wrong with you?" Garibaldi shouted. "If you had a problem with me, we could've talked this over!"

"Don't flatter yourself, chief. You're just a roadblock."

"Then who are you really after?"

Holt didn't respond.

Garibaldi walked up to him and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "I said, who are you really after?!"

"Chief." The guard in the room cautioned.

Garibaldi let go. His chest was heaving up and down from angry breaths. Holt gave a little shrug.

At that, Garibaldi turned around and walked out of the cell. The guard followed behind him. The other guard, once they got outside, gave them an inquisitive look.

Garibaldi ignored them and went straight back to security central. He sunk down in his chair and put his hands over his eyes.

That all had gone just swimmingly. He was a real screw-up, wasn't he? He'd failed on Io, he'd failed on Mars, and now he just blew it again. Holt was impossible, the data showed no results, and searches were turning up nothing. Babylon 5 was going to pop like a soda can filled with mentos and all he could say that he did was delay the inevitable.

He rubbed his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a bit. He gave himself one minute more to sulk before sitting up again.

Okay, pity party over. It was time to get back to work.

Just on time, his computer dinged. A transcript of the interrogation had arrived. The last thing he wanted to do was read over it again. There was nothing to analyze except his own failure, and he most certainly wasn't in the self-improvement kind of mood right now.

He knew another set of eyes should look over the transcript to find any hint of value that he missed. He definitely didn't want to show it to anybody else in security. He was their boss- he needed to maintain at least a shred of competency around them, and he'd already failed them once by getting captured. He also couldn't show it to Ivanova or Sinclair for much the same reasons; they were his bosses.

That left one person. And besides, Kitt already thought poorly of him because of what happened last night. What was the harm?

"Kitt, I need your help." Garibaldi commed.

"What is it? Are you alright? Where are you?" The computer's voice fluttered from the other end.

Great, he had already ruined Kitt's mood.

"I'm okay. It's nothing serious. I just need some advice." Garibaldi replied.

"Very well. I shall try my best to assist you."

"It's got to do with the case-"

"We're not partners."

"Yep." Garibaldi cringed. "I know. But I bet you're bored right now, aren't you?"

". . . 'bored' is a strong term. Technically, I don't get 'bored'." Kitt replied.

"Does that mean you won't help?"

"No, not at all. Just because I'm not your partner doesn't mean I'm not your friend. I'll help. What is it?" Kitt added vigorously.

Garibaldi bit back a comment about 'not getting bored'. He was already pressing his luck and he didn't want to scare Kitt away.

"How good are you at analyzing people?" Garibaldi asked.

"I am adept at identifying lies and falsehoods. However, I lack the ability to pick up on nuanced emotional undertones. I'm a computer, not a psychic."

"That's okay. I got a transcript for you to analyze of me and the perp. I'll play the audio and you see what you can get out of it, alright?"

Garibaldi hit play. It was agony hearing his voice played back to him, but instead of plugging his ears he held up his comm to the speaker. After what seemed like an eternity, the playback ended.

"What do you think?" Garibaldi asked.

"Your use of such violent and graphic threats was unnecessary and contributed greatly to your failure to persuade him to tell you the truth." Kitt stated.

Garibaldi pinched his nose. "I know that I screwed up. Tell me about the perp."

"What about him?"

"Don't be smart with me." Garibaldi snapped. "You know what I mean. Did he lie? Any information you could glean?"

The computer was silent for a moment. "No lies. He clearly has suicidal tendencies and a strong resolve. He believes that he's getting revenge against a member of the command staff that isn't you."

Garibaldi said nothing.

"All of that information was obvious, Garibaldi. You were there. You shouldn't have needed me to summarize for you."

"Okay, okay, I get it. I'm stupid. Anything else you'd like to add?" He hissed into the comm.

From the other end came a strange noise. It almost sounded like a noise of surprise.

"My apologies, Garibaldi. I didn't mean to aggravate you."

"Oh really now? Then why insult me?"

"I didn't mean it as an insult." Kitt sounded sincere. "I didn't. Really."

"Then what did you mean it as?" Garibaldi asked.

"I believe the term is 'banter', Garibaldi." Kitt said shyly.

Realization struck him. Kitt's tone had never been malicious, even if the words had stung.

"I noticed you were in a sour mood. That was my attempt to get you out of it." Kitt continued.

"Thanks, but, uh. . . underneath all this 'tough guy' stuff, I can get a little sensitive." Garibaldi gave a half-smile.

"Noted."

There was a period of silence. Garibaldi didn't know whether to hang up or not.

"Now, where were we?" Kitt asked. "You still require my assistance, don't you?"

"Yeah. The perp. I need to figure out what to do next with the info we have." Garibaldi replied.

"You could look into Holt's mental health records. Now that he's in your custody, his healthcare provider should sign them over to you. You could also look into his potential connection to members of the command staff." Kitt suggested.

"That second one. It doesn't make any sense. Sinclair and Ivanova are good people. They don't have a lot of enemies. It doesn't make any sense."

"Good people have the most opponents, Garibaldi, or so I've observed over the years."

"Fair point, but keep in mind that the Commander and the Lieutenant are much older than Holt. Their service histories don't exactly line up with his, so any personal slight. . ."

"Did you ever look into Holt's family history?"

Garibaldi sat up straight. "His parents. They died in the Minbari war."

"Did they now?"

"Maybe the kid's looking for someone to blame." Garibaldi got up from his seat. "I need to go talk to the Commander. Thanks, Kitt."

"Don't mention it."

Garibaldi ended the call and speed-walked his way to the Commander's office.

Kitt didn't mean to be insulting. Well, his words, by definition, were insulting, but he had learned a long time ago that there was a difference between literal definitions and connotative meanings.

Which was why it was a puzzle to figure out the right balance with Garibaldi.

He didn't think he'd have to adjust his conversational parameters so much, but the man had shown more and more surprises as Kitt had gotten to know him better.

Banter was what all friends did between each other, right? It was routine, so why did Garibaldi break that routine? Kitt didn't mean to be insulting, so why did he get insulted? He shouldn't have. It didn't make any sense.

. . . And then Garibaldi's confession about being sensitive.

Micheal would have done just about anything rather than admit in any way that he was sensitive or vulnerable. It had taken years for Kitt to get Micheal to open up about any emotion deeper than that smooth confidence he always wore on the surface. So why had Garibaldi discarded his confidence so quickly? It didn't line up.

Kitt's analytic system notified him that there was a fallacy somewhere in his reasoning. Normally such notifications were almost unconscious, and he modified his lines of reasoning accordingly, but this one caused him to stop in his figurative tracks.

It was an unwarranted assumption to assume that Garibaldi had been presenting any sort of confident facade in the first place.

What? That didn't make any sense. Of course he was confident and suave and smooth and charismatic, he had to be. He worked in law enforcement.

The analytic systems dinged again. That last conclusion was a hasty generalization.

But, Garibaldi was so honest! Honest to others, honest about himself, hiding no information to maintain a reputation. That precluded confidence, didn't it? However, at the same time, he admitted vulnerability and had insecurities about his flaws, so therefore he was not confident. But not calling him confident would be a disservice to his character.

Another notification popped up, bringing to attention the all-or-nothing fallacy.

Kitt erased that notification, because for once, it was wrong. There was a certain level of confidence needed in order to be considered 'confident', and the same went for 'smoothness' and 'charisma'. Implying that Garibaldi had none of those traits would mean that he was average and uninteresting compared to-

Compared to. . .

Kitt stopped.

He poured his awareness back to his visual sensors. Garibaldi's quarters had not changed very much, if at all, since the day he had arrived here. The rumpled blanket on the couch. The reflection of his external lights in the black screen of the TV. He took in these details one by one to try and avoid the aching feeling that was building up inside of him, but it wasn't enough.

'Aching' was a metaphorical term. To put it more truthfully, the idea of diverging from his oldest and most used interaction programs caused a negative reaction in his processor. It was contrary to his very design- he was programmed to stick to routines whenever he could to save processing power.

But those old and reliable programs he developed to interact with Micheal weren't applicable anymore because Micheal was gone. And Garibaldi. . . was an entirely different individual who deserved to be treated as such.

Kitt didn't want Garibaldi to be a replacement partner but he had been looking for it all the same.

He wanted to call again, apologize for his behavior, explain everything, but he decided that a conversation of that caliber should wait until Garibaldi was done with work as to not distract him.