She is sitting on the curb, oblivious to the noise and bustle all around her, just staring off into space. He just watched the paramedics close the ambulance doors and drive away with Greg inside, and he thought that was the worst of the injuries to his team. But suddenly he is terrified that she has injuries he can't see. She's cradling her hand and there's blood on her face. But it's the vacant look in her eyes that scares him most.

He hurries to her side, crouches beside her. "Are you okay?" he asks softly, his heart in his throat.

She turns to look at him. "Uh huh," she says, but she is clearly not okay. Nothing in her demeanor is okay. She's lost in another world.

His gaze falls to the gaping wound on her upturned palm. It needs medical attention. He reaches for her automatically, his fingers touching her gently.

"Honey, this doesn't look good." He hears the words come out of his mouth as if they are coming from somewhere else. Someone else. In the five years he has known her, their relationship ebbing and flowing, he has never called her honey. At least not out loud.

He is protective of his team. Seeing one of them hurt or threatened, be it by a suspect or an administrator, always ignites something in him. But usually it is fury; a quiet steely determination. Only with Sara does it invoke tenderness. Honey.

"It's fine," she says, spacey and unfocused. "Clean up is going to be something. We should get started."

His mouth settles into a frown. "You need to get stitches," he tells her. He keeps his voice gentle but firm. He's not going anywhere until he's sure she's receiving care. He gestures for a paramedic, noting automatically, gratefully, that it is not her paramedic. Not that he is hers anymore. He pushes away that thought and addresses the medic, though his eyes never leave Sara's face. "Would you take care of her hand, please?"

He holds both her hands, helps her rise to her feet, and hands her off to the paramedic despite her protests. The medic leads her to the ambulance, but she is watching him over her shoulder, silently telegraphing her desire to stay with him, and his heart aches for her.

All day, as he meets with the sheriff and investigates the source of the explosion and works on his case, there is a steady hum of worry about her. She's gone only for a couple hours, just long enough to get stitches, and also to be cleared of any more serious trauma, he hopes. He was far more concerned about shock than the hand wound. And then she is back on the case, off to look for a suspect with Brass, and he tries to stop worrying about her. He tells himself that Jim will look after her if she needs looking after. He tries to quiet the jealous voice in his head that whispers that it should be him with her – that no one else can protect her like he can, because no one else loves her like he does.

The day goes from bad to worse. Catherine is suspended. His leadership is called into question. And he can't hear half of it because his ears refuse to cooperate.

How can he protect his team if he can't even hear the threats against them? He eyes the rolodex on his desk with the number for the surgeon. He has avoided scheduling the surgery, scared it won't work, unwilling to face the possibility that this is permanent. But it might finally be time to do something about this.

Then, as he's sitting in his office trying to process the paperwork before he leaves for the day, both Brass and Nick independently come to him worried about Sara.

Sara.

He knew she was not okay. She didn't wait for Brass to clear the room. She put herself between the police and the suspect. She pulled a gun on a suspect. She could have been….

He can't even think about it.

She has always been impulsive, emotional. But this is something different. Nick thinks she's feeling invulnerable; that surviving the lab explosion has her on some sort of high. But he's looked into her eyes today. He knows that's not the case. She's being self-destructive. She doesn't care about her own safety. She needs someone to protect her from herself.

This last year has been a mess. Their relationship…. She didn't do anything wrong. He knew, when he chose job instead of relationship, that someday she would move on. It is enough for him to keep her close. To work with her. To be near her. But she is young and beautiful and passionate, and he cannot expect that to be enough for her.

For years, she worked beside him, and he watched her disappear into the job. He told her over and over that she needed a diversion, a hobby. But he didn't think about how much it would hurt to watch her find one.

He should have known that her diversion would be young and handsome and charming. He should have known her diversion would be someone she met at work, because where else would she meet someone? But he didn't know how much it would hurt him to watch her make plans with him. To pass along messages from him to her. To page her on her day off and wait hours for her to reply because she's off at a vineyard with him.

He never used to have to page her at all. She just appeared when he needed her.

He was cruel to her. He is ashamed of the way he pushed her away. He can still hear her voice pointing out that she just did what he told her to do. Telling him that it was confusing.

Of course, it was confusing for her. It was confusing for him too.

He didn't want to push her away. He didn't want more distance from her. When she came to him after she testified in the Haviland case, he wanted to tell her to get rid of her stupid medic – her boyfriend who was not her boyfriend. Who was just someone she went with to movies. He wanted to beg her for another chance. He wanted to tell her that he would take her to movies if that's what she wanted.

But he knew what happened when she was on the stand. The defense attorney didn't just bring up her relationship with the medic. She had to sit on that stand while the defense attorney asked her about their relationship too. He thinks about all the times he hasn't kissed her. All the times he hasn't touched her the way they both so desperately wanted. All the times he chose the job and not the relationship. And still she had to sit on that stand and listen to an attorney accuse her of falsifying evidence to please him. She had to listen to them speculate publicly, in front of her coworkers, about how far she would go to please him… "whether he returns her attentions or not".

She is the consummate professional. She never makes mistakes. Every other member of the team is attacked by the defense attorneys for the errors in their work. Small errors that mean little in the grand scheme of things. But still, errors. But they cannot find even that on Sara. The only thing they can use to attack her is him. They humiliate her in public, and they use him to do it.

He is reminded yet again of the price she will pay for his weakness if he gives in to this thing between them. So he pushes her away. And she lets him. And then he lashes out at her for doing exactly what he told her to do.

It is a wonder she does not hate him.

He knows too that she is no longer seeing her medic. And why. He did not work that case with her, but he is her supervisor. He reads all the reports. And he hears the whispered pity around the office. She holds her head high and pretends not to care, and he is consumed with guilt. He pushed her away because he was too weak to take the risk, and she just keeps paying the price.

He looks again at the rolodex. Thinks about Catherine and her kicked back report and her week of unpaid leave. Thinks about Greg in the ambulance. Thinks about Sara, gun drawn and eyes vacant. If he can't work this job anymore, who will protect them? The surgery might not work, but if he doesn't at least try, his days in this job are surely numbered.

"You got a minute," she says softly from his doorway, leaning against the door jam in a way that always makes his heart flutter a little.

"I was just about to leave," he says. He doesn't know how to talk to her tonight. He should confront her about what happened at the crime scene, but he doesn't even know what to say. He takes the doctor's card from the rolodex and begins packing his bag. One crisis at a time.

"Yeah, the schedule says you're off tonight," she says. He nods and mumbles a confirmation. "Me too."

"You should be on paid leave," he says, still worried about her.

"I'm fine," she insists. He feels a flair of irritation. She's far from fine. She always says she's fine. She's not fine.

"You were fortunate," he says. "And I'm not talking about the explosion."

"You talked to Brass," she says, rolling her eyes.

"And Nick," he confirms.

"We got the guy," she says. Blase. Unaffected. As if she didn't just nearly die twice today on his watch.

"Is that all you have to say?" he asks, standing and walking toward her. He should stay in his office. He should keep the distance between them. But he needs to feel the rush he gets from being near her. He needs to be close to her. He needs to reassure himself that she is okay.

"Would you like to have dinner with me?"

The jolt that goes through his body stops him in his tracks. She's not just asking about grabbing a meal with a coworker after shift. They both know it. For two and half years they have avoided this discussion by mutual agreement. They have flirted and fought and talked around it incessantly. But they never address it directly. She is breaking all the rules today.

He knows why she is doing this. For the same reason she rushed into that crime scene before it was cleared. She is self-destructing, and he will not be the weapon that wounds her.

"No," he says, despite the fact that he wants nothing more. Nothing except for her to be safe and well. Nothing except for protecting her when she is too rattled to protect herself.

"Why not?" she asks. "Let's have dinner. Let's see what happens."

She's smiling at him like she hasn't in years. She's so beautiful it is physically painful. He must be as cold and unfeeling as they claim if he can turn down this invitation.

He hesitates. He knows what he is supposed to do. And he knows what he wants to do. And those two things are diametrically opposed.

"Sara," he says, his voice soft and strained. He makes a low whimpering sound. She is supposed to help him. They have an agreement, though they've never discussed it openly. He isn't supposed to have to resist her like this. He isn't sure he can be strong enough for both of them. The silence between them is thick and heavy. He waves a hand between them helplessly. "I don't know what to do about this."

"I do," she says simply. And he believes her. He gazes at her, his expression softening, and takes in the cuts on her beautiful face, and the hope in her eyes, and for one second he wants to say yes. He wants to drop the briefcase full of files and the page from his rolodex and cradle her face in his hands and kiss her the way he's been dying to kiss her since he first laid eyes on her in that lecture hall in San Francisco.

But he also knows she's not in her right mind. She's in shock. She's taking risks she wouldn't normally take. She wants this now. She's willing to take the risk today. But tomorrow? Next week? When the fall out comes, she will regret this moment. And she will hate him for being weak when she needs him to be strong.

"You know, by the time you figure it out, it really could be too late," she says. She turns and walks away, and he has to stop himself from going after her. He takes a step. He watches her go. And he tells himself that he did the right thing.

But he honestly has no idea what the right thing is anymore.

He only knows how much it hurts to think about it being too late.