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

Over the Limit

Things seemed to have settled down a little. Lee seemed to accept that things would not move forward with Amanda. Rumor had it that he had even started dating again: a delightful (if somewhat Amanda-like) interpreter at the UN, named Leslie O'Connor. Francine put as much of a stop to the rumor mill as she could, after listening to every little detail the office phone tappers could tell her. Then she took a detour to see Leatherneck and grudgingly slap a crumpled ten-dollar bill into his callused palm. No sense in waiting until he came looking for her himself.

While she would have thought that Lee ceasing to pine for Amanda would be a positive outcome, it wasn't satisfactory in the least. It wasn't even a slightly-silverish lining to the clouds of Spring Cleaning that suddenly swept over the horizon. (Why Spring Cleaning happened in October was anyone's guess.)

Lee came in in the middle of Billy's Annual Spring Cleaning Spiel looking tired and vague, unfocused and overwhelmed. He carried his jacket slung over his shoulder, and his whole demeanor stank of weariness.

Or so she would have said, if she hadn't known Lee for over six years. She had seen these symptoms before, always after some sort of "unorthodox methods" (to put it mildly) with a new lady friend.

Now that she knew that Amanda saw Lee as a coworker and nothing more, she felt like she could go back to her favorite pastime: digging at Lee by talking to another person about him, just loud enough for him to hear. Maybe she was just a little more vitriolic than usual due to irritation that even the enormous changes Lee had made hadn't been good enough for Amanda. Maybe it was because she was about to lose yet another ten dollars to Leatherneck — and probably more, if Lee kept this up.

She skipped right over the fact that Billy was sending Amanda — Amanda! — to the gun range the next day, and settled on Lee's preoccupied and disinterested manner.

"Last time I saw him look this bad was when the Russian circus came to town." Amanda followed as she rose, timing her remarks in order to end when she got to Lee. "He got assigned to that Bulgarian sword swallower, what was her name...? Sascha? Sonja?"

"Svetlana," Lee finished dully, fixing his tie before Amanda could get to it. "She was a juggler," he added, seemingly for Amanda's benefit.

Tomato, tomato.

"Oh, excuse me!" Francine said, still taking in his utterly woebegone expression and untidy garments. "Well, on the national scale of, uh, dissolution and dissipation, I'd say you rate a strong thirteen today, Stetson."

He heard the actual disapproval in her staccato cheerfulness, and a little anger crept into his tired eyes.

"Francine, do you mind, huh?" he asked, his own voice going staccato in its turn before he turned to Amanda and he went back to a much gentler tone, though with a pleading note to it. "It's insomnia, that's all."

Francine couldn't help it. She scoffed just a little as he headed over to Billy. Was he still trying to convince Amanda that he was better than he was? That ship had sailed, and with it had gone all of Francine's hopes that he would get to experience something … more.

He and Billy talked for a while, their voices too low for Francine to hear anything. But the set of Billy's shoulders told her that he was scolding Scarecrow for his recent behavior. The frequency of Lee's glances at Amanda, his eyes thoughtful and sad, did nothing to tell her whether Amanda was a topic of conversation. It was so common for Lee to watch her.

He turned after Billy left, and strode a little slower than usual over to Amanda's desk.

"Billy said I should go with you," he said simply and directly. "Show you the ropes."

Amanda nodded, and they headed out.

Lee came back alone a few hours later, running his hands through his hair.

"Where's Amanda?" she asked, and she was seriously displeased to see him start to hedge his answer.

"She's pursuing a couple leads," he said, finally.

A phone rang down the hall. Then another rang. Then one in the bullpen started to ring. Then Billy's phone.

There had been a terrorist bombing. A congressman was dead. There were civilian casualties.

Lee swayed on the spot when he heard who was involved: Save Our Bay.

"Amanda," he muttered, reaching out blindly to grasp Francine's arm. Then he turned and ran, moving quickly for the first time in a week, his lethargy broken in the face of his guilt and fear.

She was okay. Francine would never have forgiven her if she hadn't been.

Lee brought her in, looking much less haggard and much more alive than he had recently. Amanda, for her part, was (to use the word Billy had used earlier) enthused. Francine walked into Billy's office to find them arguing as usual, with Amanda vigorously defending the suspect and Lee trying to tell her that just because she liked Elizabeth Sullivan didn't make her innocent. They left, still arguing, and Francine went back to talking to Billy.

She didn't see either of them until the next day. It was such a mess — first a bombing, then Lee getting the suspect out of jail, then the murder of the suspect's accomplice. She spent most of the day on the phone, trying to convince the Metropolitan Police that the agency couldn't be held legally responsible for the whole situation.

She had just hung up the phone when it rang again. It was Lee.

"Hey, Francine," he said, "I've got a lead but I can't give you any details now. I need you to dress up like Amanda with a wig and everything, and I'll meet you outside your apartment in half an hour."

She thought she heard an unfamiliar woman's voice ask something before he hung up, but she couldn't be sure.

She went home, changed, and waited. He drove up wildly in his Corvette, giving her only enough time to get in before he was off again.

He gave her very little context on their drive to TransOceanic, and what context he did give her was mainly the "Amanda was right! Why didn't I listen?" variety. She was able to gather that Elizabeth Sullivan had been framed ("Just like Amanda said!"), that O'Keefe had been blackmailing and intimidating Congressman Rawlings ("I should have listened to her!"), and that they were now returning the favor of blackmail and intimidation to smoke out the real perpetrators.

There wasn't time for intricate plans by the time they got to the TransOceanic building. It was a confused jumble of an explosion, a chase, a hostage situation, a standoff, and, miraculously, a perfectly incredible shot from Amanda that brought a net down, quite literally, on the bad guy.

She left Lee standing staring at Amanda, utterly lost for words, and hauled O'Keefe out to the car just as more agency vehicles pulled up. As she forced the older man into the back seat of one of the cars, she pulled off her wig.

Not only was it itchy, but pretending to be Amanda just felt wrong.