Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Burn Out Part 1

Seeing Amanda's obituary seemed to trigger something in Lee. It started with him coming in late again. Then he started leaving early without approval.

Then, when he didn't come in at all one morning, Billy sent Duffy to look for him. He found him at Nedlinger's, deep in his third drink of the day. After that, he became what could only be called a regular. He went to Ned's on his lunch breaks. His lunch breaks grew longer.

His hair was uncombed. His shoes weren't shined. He stopped shaving for days at a time. His breath stank of whiskey.

She didn't see Amanda anywhere anymore. Of course, Amanda was busy getting her life back up and running after being assumed dead, but it felt as if Billy was purposefully keeping Lee away from her. It felt like the wrong thing to do.

If anyone could reach Lee, or see through the depression to the man inside, Amanda could.

People started requesting not to work with him. Billy sent her on a simple courier drop as backup, and he botched it badly. Something was going terribly wrong.

The day after the busted courier drop, Billy met her in the hallway and asked her to "level with him".

She hated leveling with him. It meant throwing Lee under the bus.

"The man is in a definite slump," she had said earlier, but that didn't begin to describe it. The man was practically useless as an agent.

"Is Lee losing it?" he asked next, and she did not answer right away.

"I honestly don't know," she said instead. "But it might not hurt to bring him in from the field for a while." She saw him coming, staggering down the hall.

Was he losing it?

"Yes," was the only honest reply, and she was proved right when Lee was called directly into Billy's office.

She had never heard them yell like that. The open blinds gave her a front-row seat to the argument, and she cringed every time Lee made yet another bad choice.

He's out of here, she thought, watching in horror as Lee grabbed Billy by the lapels and shook him.

It felt like her parents' divorce all over again — the yelling, the cursing, the violence, the uncertainty of her own future as she watched the people she loved most in the world fall apart.

Lee stormed out of Billy's office and headed like a tornado out of the bullpen, almost running over Amanda, who — thank God! — Billy seemed to have finally contacted. She watched him bounce off a wall and weave his way down the hallway, then she turned and walked toward Francine with fear in her eyes.

"Francine?" She sounded terrified.

"Uh-huh?" It was the only response she could give. It wasn't professional in the least.

"What's the matter with Lee?" Amanda asked, and Francine felt no pleasure in knowing something Amanda did not.

"I'm afraid it's called burn out," she said, and then stopped before her voice broke.

He disappeared again. Amanda brought him in. She was a bloodhound when it came to Lee, and once she found him she was not going to let go.

He came in looking rumpled and belligerent, like a small boy who got into a fistfight on the playground and defied anyone to make him apologize.

"In my office, Scarecrow," said Billy.

Please, please just go with him.

He was drunk. He had to be, to speak with such disrespect. "Oh, are you sure I'm not supposed to report to detention, or do I write an essay on the blackboard?"

"Get in here!" Billy snapped, and Lee, looking exactly like the school bully he had somehow become, glanced back at Amanda and swaggered into the office.

Francine went to join Amanda, who was standing frozen where he had left her.

"This is not going to be pretty," she murmured, and Amanda looked even more upset.

The office door closed. Billy began shutting the blinds.

What would Lee do, if he were fired? This was all he had ever known.

She sighed.

"Want a cup of coffee?" she asked, and Amanda shrugged a little.

They were silent as they waited for the coffee to brew. The entire bullpen had been on high alert all morning, and clearly they had been drinking a lot of coffee. This was the third pot of the day.

"I still don't believe Lee's a burnout," Amanda ventured at last.

It was sweet of her to trust Lee so wholeheartedly, but even she couldn't possibly continue to see a saint where everyone else saw a deeply flawed sinner.

"Aw, come on Amanda," she said, trying to be as gentle as she could be. "He's got all the classic symptoms. Erosion of skills, lack of confidence, depression. Have you noticed how defensive he's been lately?"

This last question was something of a shot in the dark. She didn't know if Amanda had noticed or not, but the other woman's lips tightened and she knew she hadn't been mistaken.

"Then there's the little matter of his, uh ..." She mimed drinking, in that universally-understood gesture that represented a drunk.

"You know Lee's just a social drinker," Amanda said loyally, and Francine wondered what she would say if she knew that he had never been "just a social drinker" until he met Amanda. Before then, he had been a "black-out drunk on the weekends" drinker.

"Well, then let's just say he's been socializing an awful lot lately," she said, deciding not to tell Amanda all his secrets.

"Isn't it possible this is only temporary?" asked Amanda. Bless her — she always did look for the best in everyone.

But it was no use giving her false hope.

"Out of all the agents that I've ever seen hit the wall, I can't think of one who's ever really made a recovery," she said.

Johnson.

Erickson.

Donovan.

Willis.

Brackin.

Saunders.

Daugherty.

Evans.

Thompson.

And the latest: Stetson.

Her heart ached.

"Well. Lee will. I'm sure he will," Amanda said, her voice desperate.

Billy's office had been strangely quiet, but the door opened suddenly and Lee's yell split the tense anticipation of the bullpen.

"All right!"

"I'm not through with you yet!" Billy roared.

"Man, I have had enough," Lee thundered, turning back to Billy as he reached Francine and Amanda. "And you can call somebody else into your office to yell at."

"Get back in here," said Billy, much more quietly. "That's an order. You're being insubordinate."

"Well, you'd better get used to it," Lee retorted.

"That's it, Buster. You're on report."

It could not have been plainer that Lee did not care. "Aw," he scoffed. "I'm devastated."

He blew a kiss to Billy and stormed out.

Amanda set down her cup and followed him, stopping at the door to call after him. "Lee, can I talk to you for a…"

She trailed off, watching him bat away invisible barriers as he stumbled down the hall.

"I don't think you're getting through to him," Francine told her.

"Well, I will," said Amanda, sounding at the point of tears. "I know I will."

It was a few hours later that Amanda came into the office, holding a folder of what Francine knew to be Lee's case reports. Her eyes were brighter than usual; she had obviously been crying. If Francine hadn't known that Lee would never forgive himself if he mistreated Amanda, she might have thought that he was so far gone that he had done something to her to make her cry.

Francine didn't say anything to her. She didn't make eye contact as she strode across to Billy's office and rapped on the door.

Francine sighed.

How had life changed so horribly, in only a few weeks?