Chapter 4

"So, tell me, Just-Steph," Ranger said as he swung himself down a couple of steps in the path out front of the hospital. He cast a glance over his shoulder as he reached the bottom and steadied himself on his crutches, and although she couldn't see his eyes through the shades he wore, she could have sworn there was more of a twinkle in them than there had been the previous day when she'd visited with him. Getting him out of his room was already looking like the right decision. "What, in your professional opinion, is wrong with me?"

She couldn't have stopped the snort that escaped her if she tried. Probably, she should have at least tried to cover it up with a cough or something, but he'd caught her off-guard, dodged past any defences she'd prepared to get her through the day – as he had proven was a specialty of his in the past – and she was helpless to show her true reaction. Clearly, she'd given the impression of some kind of medical professional since he'd called her 'Doc' earlier and was asking her opinion of his condition now. Oh, how wrong he was.

"You've had a nasty knock to your head, and your brain has had to lock away some of your memories to protect them," Steph said, skipping down the stairs to him. It was probably wildly inaccurate, but it was what she'd been telling herself to get her through. The reason Ranger couldn't remember her was because of the lock-tight defence his brain had thrown up to preserve every memory he had of her when faced with the damage from whatever blow he'd received. Like a dragon, protecting its hoard.

Her explanation caused him to laugh, and Steph had the sudden realisation that while he clearly didn't remember who he was, there must have been some part of his brain whispering to him that she was safe, because he never would have been this open with a complete stranger otherwise. Even if he thought that stranger was his new therapist or whatever. She'd seen him with medical staff before and this was not a typical reaction to them. There was hope for him yet.

"What kind of memories would be so important that my brain would want to protect them above all others?" Ranger enquired as they reached the street and turned left.

"That's what we need to figure out, I guess," Steph replied nonchalantly.

He turned his head to gaze down at her through the dark lenses of his glasses and she got the feeling he was drawing conclusions about her character, not that she cared. They'd been there before. Ranger had judged her character during their first meeting, and though he'd found amusement in the fact that a little waif like her wanted to take on the world of criminals with absolutely no training and experience under her belt, he'd helped her anyway. He'd declared her worthy of his trust and attention, and he'd do it again. She'd make sure of it.

"How?" The question that left his lips was short, but the hints of a tone he'd tried to keep out of his voice told her just how many questions were contained within the single word.

Steph shrugged. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "But I'm determined to make it happen if you're committed to putting in the work." By this point, they'd reached the café she'd spotted on the way to the hospital the previous day, and in an attempt to distract Ranger from the fact that she didn't really have a plan for getting his memories back beyond hoping and praying that time and familiarity would work something loose, she instructed him to sit at a table outside while she went inside to order. He tried to protest, to claim that he had particular tastes that she couldn't possibly appease without knowing them. Steph, though, was confident that after ten years of friendship and more, she could pick out the exact menu item that he would have chosen for himself. "Trust me," she said with a smirk. "You'll be surprised."

Perhaps it was curiosity that made him agree, perhaps an urge to prove her wrong, but he agreed either way, settling himself down in a chair directly in front of that wall of the café so that his six was covered and he could keep an eye on everyone around. When she returned a few minutes later, he'd managed to get hold of a menu and was browsing it's offerings. He looked up when she approached.

"What'd you get me?" he asked.

"It's a surprise," she replied, taking the seat opposite him even though she longed to sit right next to him and lean into his side, absorbing his warmth and strength. Not being able to have physical contact with him in the way she was used to was torture, but nowhere near as traumatic as the blank eyes he'd cast on her yesterday morning when she'd entered his hospital room. "Something tells me you're not good with surprises," she told him, plucking the menu from his hands and tucking it under the napkin holder so it didn't fly away. "But it'll be good for you to submit to a little something beyond your control."

The images that filled her head, of times when she'd successfully surprised him and been rewarded for her efforts, were enough to cause a blush to creep onto her cheeks, a reaction that she couldn't possibly have hidden from her husband's eagle eyes, but that he seemed to have enough diplomacy not to mention. The very tip of his right brow peaked up over the top of the sunglasses, but he said nothing, just waiting for her to make the next move.

"I'm told the memories you're missing are from the last ten years," Steph said, pushing away the amorous scenes attempting to take over he thoughts so she could get on with the task at hand: digging out Ranger's memories. "Tell me about the last thing you remember before waking up in the hospital."

Ranger took a moment, just staring at her from the shields she'd provided him. She wished she could see his eyes, to read what was going on behind them, but she knew the glasses were the best option for him at the moment. There was no doubt in her mind that he would have gladly suffered the pain of sunlight to spend time with her if he'd recalled who she was and she'd mentioned wanting to go to the café, but he had no reason to be so self-sacrificing today. It was refreshing to see him put his own wellbeing first for a change, but Steph hated having a physical wall between them on top of the distance of the table and the lack of recognition.

"I was in my office running a background search on a skip I was going to pick up later," he said slowly, head drifting to the side as he concentrated on the details. "It was just a typical armed robbery FTA. Nothing special." He paused, his face snapping back to look directly at Steph. "That's Failure To Appear," he explained. "I do fugitive apprehension."

Steph nodded her understanding, using the extensive training she'd had from the guys over the years to keep her expression relatively neutral.

Ranger continued. "The phone rang. It was Connie."

"Who's Connie?" Steph prompted. She already knew, of course, but it was the kind of question a therapist would ask, and since he seemed to think she was his therapist, she thought she may as well play the part.

"She's office manager at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds," Ranger explained easily. "She's the one that lets me know when there are new cases for me to pick up."

"Is that what she was calling about?"

He shook his head. "No," he said, a little wrinkle appearing on his forehead. "She was calling in a favour." His attention drifted away from her face again, thoughtful. "She wanted me to meet with the new bounty hunter Vinnie hired and show them the ropes."

This is it! Steph thought excitedly, working hard to contain her reaction to his words. She knew for a fact that she was the bounty hunter in question. Connie had set them up for a brief meeting and he'd become her mentor. The memory he was talking about was the start of their long journey into each other's hearts. If it hadn't been for that moment, Steph and Ranger might not be the people they were today. "Was there anything special about the bounty hunter?" she asked, proud of how even her voice came out as everything inside her was yelling and jumping around to urge her to just spill all the details of their relationship, from that very humble beginning to now.

Ranger's gaze, even through the sunglasses, was searing when he returned it to her face once more. "It was a woman, I think," he said, creases cutting deeper into his forehead as he struggled to recall more details.

"Did you agree to meet with her?"

And just like that the concentration evaporated. Ranger's expression cleared into a semi-blank mask and his shoulders lifted and fell in his own tiny rendition of a shrug. "I don't know," he admitted. "That's where the memories cut out. I assumed I'd been called into the wind before I had a chance to meet with her, but Lester and Bobby assure me that's not what happened."

"And that memory is how old?" she prompted, despite already knowing the answer. She could have given him the exact date of that memory.

"Ten or so years?" he guessed. It was eleven, but she'd let him have it.

"And you don't remember anything at all from the time between that phone call and waking up in the hospital?" she checked. "No faces or feelings or… anything?"

"Nada," Ranger confirmed, spreading his hands to show how empty both they and his memories of that time were.

Their food arrived before any other questions and comments could be voiced, the waitress setting down a cinnamon donut and a chocolate shake in front of Steph, a grapefruit and Greek yoghurt 'sundae' and water in front of Ranger. He looked from his bowl to her plate and that eyebrow ticked up into view again. "That stuff will kill you," he informed her, and Steph could hear the way he cut off the words before the sentence was finished. Her heart leapt. He'd almost called her Babe.

"So I've heard," Steph replied coolly, keeping a tight hold on her excitement. It was promising, but it didn't prove anything. "How'd I do for you?" she asked instead of giving in to the celebrations inside her.

His lips quirked in a suppressed smile. "You did okay," he admitted reluctantly, picking up his spoon and taking a bite. His eyes were obscured by the dark lenses of the glasses, but that didn't stop him from capturing Steph in his gaze, rendering her unable to look away as he chewed slowly and swallowed.

*o*

"Do you remember what happened on the mission?" Steph asked. "How you got the head injury that lead to your amnesia?"

They'd finished their brunch and had been heading back to Ranger's hospital room when he steered her down a corridor in the opposite direction and out into a lush garden, guiding her to a shady walking path. Steph had made a feeble attempt to make sure he wasn't overdoing himself, but he just brushed her off, stating that he'd endured much worse than the broken ankle was currently lugging around. And when he'd requested the 'other sunglasses' his 'idiot cousin' had been wearing, and swapped them out for the darker, uglier ones, she'd been helpless to deny him. She couldn't necessarily see her eyes any better, but at the very least he looked more like himself in these frames, and they uncovered a bit more of his face. Including his eyebrows which once again assumed their dubious half-cocked positions at her question.

"Do you have the clearance for that?" he countered, halting their progress to give her another once over and clearly deciding that she wasn't the kind of person to whom the government would afford such privileges.

Steph just smiled in return. She knew she wasn't the kind of person the government granted high levels of secure knowledge. She may not condone the ways of the Burg Grapevine, but she wasn't above using it to her advantage, or offering up the information if it helped out a friend. God only knows what she'd do with top secret information. "Definitely not," she said.

"In that case," Ranger said, swinging forward again and forcing her to follow. "I don't remember the mission, but Bobby and Lester told me all about it, so it seems like I do."

"So everything between that phone call with Connie about the new bounty hunter, and waking up in the hospital state-side is a big blind spot?"

Ranger nodded.

"Absolutely nothing to speak of?"

He paused at the bench he'd reached, lowering himself onto it without a word, but his gaze followed her movement as she sat down beside her. "You're not like other shrinks, are you?" he questioned, brow furrowing, like he was trying to figure her out.

Steph let out a sigh. She didn't know how much longer she'd be able to keep up this charade. Her husband was right in front of her, but he felt a million miles away and every time he looked at her with that calculating expression the yawning chasm between them only seemed to widen. "No, I'm not."

"Good," Ranger said definitively, leaning back against the seat. "Shrinks usually make me feel…" his words trailed off as he searched for the right word to describe his feeling on psychologists.

"Violated?" Steph suggested, drawing a surprised glance from the man beside her.

His tone was wondering when he replied simply, "Yes."

She smiled knowingly, not because she'd been able to randomly guess at the word in his mind, but because she'd plucked it from a conversation they'd had after his last mission six and half years ago. Her expression fell as she remembered the revelations they'd had after that particular mission and how it had changed their lives forever. What were the chances that this mission would have a similar effect? Her purse seemed to gain ten pounds where it sat on her lap, weighed down by the second impulse buy she'd picked up at the drugstore hours earlier.

When she realised that Ranger was still staring at her, probably reading every thought that passed over her face, she lowered her bag to the ground beside the bench and folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking, or reaching out to tuck inside one of his. "Tell me about home," she suggested quietly.

"Now, there's a shrink question," Ranger smirked, but instead of continuing on to answer it, his attention skipped to her hands, caught briefly on her wedding and engagement rings there, and then down to her purse. "Are you recording this?"

She hadn't been expecting the enquiry, and her face showed that clearly. "No."

Ranger nodded like he was confirming something to himself. "And you're not taking notes. Do you have an eidetic memory? How do you keep track of what I say in our sessions?"

"I thought you said you preferred my un-shrink-like approach," Steph countered rather than answer the question.

"I do," Ranger agreed. "But I-"

Steph cut him off before he could grow too much more suspicious. It was time to clear up at least a little of the misconception. "Don't worry about notes and such," she told him. "These conversations are informal… unofficial. I'm doing this at Lester and Bobby's request, not as part of your treatment through the hospital."

"How do you know Lester and Bobby?" he asked curiously, tipping his head ever so slightly to the side, as though viewing her from a different angle might help him to uncover all her secrets. Little did he know he already knew them all.

Well, all bar one, but there was no point in thinking about that one until she had confirmation.

"We're friends," she said truthfully.

That intense, calculating furrow was back as he took in all the things she'd said with those two words, teasing out the different meanings and concealed details she'd infused them with. "Have we met before?" he asked, voice low, shoulders tensing. He hated no knowing, not remembering. For a man who prided himself on knowing everything about everyone and everything, and constantly used his knowledge to his advantage, this was quite possibly one of the worst things that could have happened to him.

It caused a great well of sadness within Steph, but she'd seen glimpses of her Ranger today that gave her hope. Even if he didn't remember her, perhaps they could make things work. "You don't need to torture yourself trying to remember," she said quietly, shifting on the bench so that she was facing him more fully, one leg bent and resting on the seat between them. "Tell me about home instead."

He didn't like the connotations of her assurance, that he did, in fact, know her, but took a deep breath to try an let it go anyway. "Home as in…?" he asked, letting the end of his question hang in the air between them for her to finish as she saw fit.

Steph shrugged leaning her elbow on the back of the bench and resting her head against it. "Whatever comes to mind when you hear the word home," she said vaguely. "A place, a time, a person, a feeling, anything."

The quiet rustle of trees and chirping of nearby birds came into the foreground of the soundscape as Ranger silently contemplated what home was for him. His expression twisting and changing first in concentration, then confusion, frustration and finally resignation before he carefully shuttered it away. His face wasn't blank, but guarded as he started talking about Abuela Rosa and the time he'd spent with her in Florida as a teen.

"So, Florida is home?" Steph enquired as his story about the time she'd used baking cookies with him as a punishment for missing curfew came to an end.

"Abuela has always felt like home," he murmured, brow creasing once more.

"And there's nothing about Trenton that feels like home?" She wanted to slap herself upside the head for the question. It wasn't productive. It hadn't come from the place that wanted to help him remember. It had come from the part that was jealous of his grandmother because for years Steph had been his home, and now one stupid mission that he shouldn't even have been on had wiped that slate clean.

The pointedness of her question wasn't lost on Ranger and gave her a quizzical look. "No," he said flatly. "As soon as the new office is up and running, I'll be going back to Florida to manage the company from there."

Steph shook her head, sliding her leg back down to the ground so that she was facing forward again, avoiding Ranger's gaze. "It's been up and running for ten years now, and you're operating out of the Trenton office," she told him gently. She allowed herself a quick sideways glance to gauge his reaction to this news, but immediately wished she'd just kept her eyes forward as she saw his impenetrable blank mask fall into place.

Several tense moments passed between them before he jerked to his feet, jamming his hands into the cuffs of his crutches. "I'm getting a headache," he said flatly. "We should call it a day. I still have real therapy later."

*o*

That evening when Lester and Bobby returned to the hotel room where she'd been doing her best to concentrate on Rangeman admin work and not the fact that she'd somehow managed to fuck everything up with her husband, they did not bring good news. She had hoped that the change in Ranger's demeanour had simply been the headache he claimed to be getting at the end of their time together and that a bit of rest was all he needed to feel more like himself, but those hopes were dashed away the moment she asked how he was for the rest of the day and Bobby flopped down on the sofa next to her with a sigh. Never a good sign.

"He was out of sorts," Lester explained, snatching a cushion from between the pair and dropping it to the floor so he could sit on it.

"Out of sorts how?" Steph pressed. There was a big difference between 'I have a headache and need more sleep' out of sorts and 'I'm angry at the world for putting me in this retched position and I'm gonna take it out on you' out of sorts. She'd seen him exhibit both over the last ten years, along with a myriad of other variations, but had thankfully never been on the receiving end of the latter. Somehow, though, she had a feeling she might not be so lucky this time around. She'd been stupid to allow her emotions to direct her mouth, to ask such a leading question of the man. God knows he was doing his best to be open with her.

"Hard to say," Bobby sighed. "Did you notice anything during your stroll with him?"

Steph thought about his reactions and the way he would look at her while he was thinking before answering a question. "It seemed a bit like he was reaching for something at times, like there was something floating just out of reach, maybe like a spidey sense, but," she shrugged, not wanting to admit that she was the cause of her husband's mood. It wasn't the first time she'd been the catalyst for him snapping at others, and if they got through this it certainly wouldn't be the last, but she wasn't proud of how she'd reacted to Ranger telling her that his Abuela was 'home.' She knew that he was closest with Abuela Rosa out of all of his family, and that if it hadn't been for his time with her in Florida he might have ended up on a very different path, but that hadn't mattered to her as they'd sat on that bench in the garden. All she could think was that she should be his home. She should be the person he talks about with that fond smile on his face.

"He cut the conversation off pretty abruptly," she told them, realising they were waiting for her to finish her sentence. "Said he had a headache."

"That makes sense given his injury," Lester pointed out helpfully, and it might have been a comfort if she hadn't seen Ranger's face when he did it.

"I guess," she murmured, setting the laptop aside and picking up the bottle of water she'd been sipping on all afternoon. "But I hate when he shuts me out like that. If he can't remember me, how is he going to remember-"

"He will," Lester said firmly, cutting off her words before she could get bogged down in her negative thoughts.

Bobby wrapped an arm around her shoulders, dragging her into a tight, reassuring hug. "He'll come around, Bomber," he promised. "He just needs some more time."

"Bobby's right," Lester agreed. "If he's getting that tip of the tongue feeling then he's probably close to breaking through whatever wall is between him and his memories."

She sighed and nodded, letting their words sink into her soul as she relaxed into Bobby's embrace. She hoped they were. There was no way she could get through everything that was mounting in front of her without him.