AN: CW in this chapter for a super brief moment of strangulation.

'When the cloud in the sky starts to pour
And your life is just a storm you're braving
Don't tell yourself you can't lean on someone else
Cause we all need saving sometimes.'

"We All Need Saving" ~ Jon McLaughlin

~OL~

For all the emergency room's chaos, OR was almost tranquil.

Sam stole a peek at an abandoned schedule on the nurse's desk and slipped down two hallways. A wall of windows greeted him, the operating theatre in the middle of choreographed set up. Wheeled in pre-anaesthetized, the teenage patient lay intubated and waiting to be cut open.

Sam saluted the boy with two fingers and kept walking until he found a small prep room. He didn't bother knocking, just propped against the door frame. No one saw him for a few minutes and he relished the bustle of nurses and doctors getting ready for what they did best.

The intense double take Richard initiated from his spot over the disinfectant sink brought with it a strange humour. Sam hadn't caught Richard off guard in almost a year.

"Sam?" Richard hadn't masked yet, a small comfort. It painted a full portrait of his gaping mouth. The usual blue gown sat over his scrubs, and a nurse held up gloves to shimmy onto his squeaky-clean hands. Tufts of hair stuck out from his paper cap. "What are you doing here? I'm about to operate."

"Kid's sick?"

"Appendicitis."

"That sounds painful."

"It is."

Sam kept his tone light, despite their hefty eye contact. Visions of yesterday's fight floated between them. "Just wondering where your lunchroom is in this place."

"What?"

"Your lunchroom, where you eat. You've got one, right?"

Richard blinked. "Uh…yeah. One floor down. By the bathrooms."

Sam nodded. He gave up battling a smile and it glowed with warmth on his face. Richard's whole body relaxed at the sight of it, stiff places around his ribs that had Sam itching to check for further injury.

He resisted and winked at Richard instead. "Downstairs, got it."

"Why do you need to know?"

"You'll find out at lunch."

~OL~

Let it never be said Samuel Gerard wasn't punctual.

At 11:59 on the dot, Sam led Cosmo, Noah, and Poole into a sunny room on their right. And forget Richard—seeing thirteen plus doctors do a double take at him was delightful. Definitely a career highlight. Sam scanned the faces until he found one alone at the back, in the corner by a spider plant.

"Howdy!" Sam plopped himself next to a gobsmacked Richard. The man dropped his sandwich. "This seat taken?"

Richard didn't reply, too busy staring at the four marshals as they arranged themselves in a neat circle around him. They knocked elbows and slapped hands away from food and made fun of each other's terrible jokes, heedless of his surprise.

Cosmo caught a nearby doctor staring as well. "Hey, how are ya?"

The woman's mouth worked.

"How…where, you…"

Sam talked over Richard. "Did you know that for all the government's money—our office doesn't have a break room?"

"Sam…"

"Gotta eat right there at our desks on top of paperwork and missing convict files."

"It sucks," Noah chimed in. He helped Poole arrange bento boxes on the table from their takeout bags.

"So we figured why not bring the party to you for a change." Sam draped an arm across the back of Richard's chair without looking at him. Just like that night in the car. "These animals have been hankering to get out of the office anyway."

Cosmo huffed and lounged in his own chair as if he'd hung out here all his life. "We have a wicked case of the dead ends right now."

"Investigating a crooked prison official." Noah leaned in from Richard's other side. "Real piece of work."

"Oh." Richard carefully folded up his sandwich and tucked it away in the briefcase at his feet. Victory. "Well…you could tell me about it, if you want. Since you came all this way."

The marshals beamed. Cosmo was already off, mouth fast enough to rival an auctioneer, and Richard unwound the longer he talked. Noah peppered in details of how they researched criminal history and all the while Poole spooned more food into Richard's bento box when he wasn't looking. He and Poole were the only ones brave and practiced enough to use chopsticks.

Sam picked at his food with one hand, content to savour the very warm, alive sensation under his right, especially when Richard laughed at Cosmo's dumb joke. Sam unwound a bit too. No one could hurt them here. He might not be able to put the fear of God into this mystery man harassing his friend, but he could help Richard feel safe in his own workplace.

Honestly, Sam was quite proud of himself for not killing anybody. He's not sure his fresh-out-the-academy self from twenty-five years ago would have possessed such self-control.

"Sounds like he has outside help, not inside help." Richard took a bite of beef wagyu.

The table went quiet. Poole's eyes were wide.

Richard glanced up, mouth half full. His brows crinkled his forehead. "What?"

"We…" Cosmo blinked. "We didn't even think of that, him using someone outside the prison system."

Richard shrugged, as if he hadn't just cracked their week-old case in one conversation. "Just figured it because you said he never uses his credit card at a particular gas station, only cash. He uses it for everything else, right? Must have a contact there he doesn't want traced."

"It's true." Poole stood and grabbed her cellphone. "I'll call and let Biggs know."

Sam patted Richard's arm. "If this whole surgeon thing doesn't work out, you'd make a mean detective."

"Don't tease me."

Sam wasn't, but didn't bother arguing when Noah's eyes landed on him. Yeah, he wasn't winning any subtlety points.

"Doctor Kimble?"

Richard startled and looked up like another human being had never spoken to him before. So did Sam, scanning this new player for aggressive body language.

But Richard just looked confused. "Vishnu, hey."

A young doctor stood there, lab coat and all, clutching a lunch tray in clammy fingers. His eyes flicked around the marshals before landing on Richard. "Just wanted to say your tip for my first colostomy procedure really helped. Starting on the tubing before tying off the large intestine made all the difference once it came time install the bag."

"That's…that's great." Richard straightened. "Glad it worked out."

Vishnu scurried away with a parting grin.

Richard sat back, flushed. Cosmo resumed his chatter and Poole snickered at Noah's persistent antics to steal everything on Sam's plate. Sam let him. He was too busy speculating how long it had been since the good doc had been spoken to in a friendly way by a colleague.

"You like teaching the youngsters?"

"Sometimes. They've kept their distance though, until today." Richard leaned back even more, right into Sam's arm. He finally met Sam's eyes. "Thank you."

At the whisper, Sam tossed away pretense and squeezed his opposite shoulder.

You're not getting rid of us now.

~OL~

Sam showed up the next day, then the day after that, and the one after that…

Until even other doctors started to nod in greeting when he appeared at the lunchroom door. Some days it was the whole team, in a clamor to create as much cheer and amusement around Richard as possible, and other days Sam came alone.

Just the two of them, sipping coffee and reading the paper or, in Richard's case, patient notes.

They both liked these days best, even when they didn't talk at all. Richard presented Sam with even more elaborate baked goods and Sam pulled his chair close, their ankles brushing. Sometimes he and Richard just looked out the window together. Sometimes Sam told him stories from years at this job and made Richard laugh so hard he had to put his head down on the table.

Colour returned to Richard's face. His bones ceased their pointy juts and he began to eat most of whatever they shoved on his plate.

Sam let out a real whoop the day Richard flopped back and declared himself full. No small milestone.

"Can't remember the last time I even felt full," he said, eyes wet.

Tissues were passed around after that, Poole ever prepared.

But today! Today Sam practically bounced through the halls, right arm full of a covered marble cake. Today was special.

Today was a different kind of milestone.

"Richard?" Sam poked his head in the break room first. No luck. Other doctors looked up and murmured greetings. "Anyone seen Richard yet? He's not in the OR either."

Vishnu's brow furrowed. "No, Deputy. Now that you mention it, I haven't seen him since he finished consulting on one of my patients."

"When was that?"

"An hour ago."

Sam cursed under his breath. He cycled through the rest of the floor, offices and examination rooms aplenty, with still no sign of his friend. Maybe he should have called ahead first. It was sheer luck so far that Richard's patients or surgeries hadn't run overtime in the past ten days so he could eat at noon with them.

He had half a mind to break down and ask them to page Richard at the nurse's station, maybe fake an emergency to ensure he wouldn't skip a meal—

"…What we talked about last time…"

Sam's steps faltered. He didn't recognize the voice, but lightning arced down his spine at the tone.

"Let me by, Myers. Please."

Sam sprang back to life, down the opposite end of the hall and a door on the left he hadn't thought to check. A large storage room. He'd actually passed it without reading what it was.

The broad oak door sneered at him now, a reflection of his own self-recrimination. Supply 221A, it read. So simple, so small a thing.

Hiding such a sharp voice.

"Not until you give notice. This isn't over until you admit it."

"No. There's nothing to admit."

SMACK.

Sam practically flew the last two feet and burst through the door. Another skin-on-skin sound followed and Sam didn't even bother drawing his sidearm.

A bullet would be too quick.

"Hey." Sam shouted it before he fully took in the scene but when he did, that only made the thunder crackle in his veins worse—Richard's shirt collar in the grip of a taller, swarthy, muscled doctor in a matching lab coat, the man's fist pulled back for another haymaker wallop. Fear and fury rolled off Richard in tsunami waves. "Let him go right now."

The appearance of an unfamiliar face alarmed this Myers more than the words. So much that he froze in place.

His hand was still wrapped around Richard's shirt, fabric tight hard enough to close around his throat.

The return of that red curtain was almost a relief.

Sam surged forward and yanked the man back by his hair before either of them could take another breath. Myers cried out—but he let go. Richard stumbled back into a shelf of scalpels, rubbing his freshly bruised neck and gasping a suction sound that Sam had never heard a human being make before and dearly hoped he never did again.

"You miserable piece of earth." Sam shoved Myers against a wall. He had the nerve to whine about it so Sam shoved a little harder. "You're the one who's made my friend's life a nightmare."

Myers panted. "He…I can't work with him, a murderer…"

Richard's sharp intake of breath filled the room.

Sam brightened. "Well, that's just great! Because I'm going to get you permanently banned from working in the state of Illinois so fast you'll see it on the news before you get the call. Hell, might even have some fun and get your license revoked while I'm at it."

Myers went white. "You can't do that!"

"I have a nifty little badge here that says I can. I catch criminals for a living and I've just bagged a whale."

Myers glanced past Sam to Richard, and his mouth twisted with hate. "He's the criminal. He shot his wife and a cop. Why are you defending this man?"

Sam's hand began to shake around the crop of gelled curls. "Because he's innocent and if you'd taken half a second to do your research, you'd know the cop was killed by a paid assassin. Richard's innocent in every sense of the word and you have no right to go around attacking him."

Myers just spit at Richard's feet. "You deserve everything you got and more."

The red went supernova. Sam punched Myers hard enough to break his nose and he crumpled to the floor, boneless.

Sam stood over him a few seconds longer, exhales harsh between his teeth. Bloodlust swirled in his larynx and years of practice forced him to gulp it back. A month…over four weeks this parasite had assaulted Richard without so much as an ounce of remorse for it.

"S-Sam?"

Sam pivoted on his heel, heart still a kettle drum against his chest.

Richard didn't shrink back from the apoplectic expression, but his eyes widened. Blood leaked out of his lower lip and nostril, puffy from the hits, and a stethoscope had fallen from around his neck. Crimson dotted the collar of his lab coat, marred like new fallen snow. A bag of tongue depressors was still fisted in his hand, the whole reason for this drama unfolding in a supply closet.

Outpatient work today. Just an ordinary day smeared by one man's bigotry.

"Sam?" Richard asked again, voice croaked from the strangulation. He approached Sam like he was the wild animal in this scenario. "You with me?"

"'Course," Sam snapped, and now Richard jumped. "I'm not some rookie who flies off the handle."

Utterly useless words, with the unconscious man on the floor at their feet. Richard's mouth dropped open once he got a decent look at Myers. "Did you give him a concussion?"

Sam's eyes darkened. So did his tone. "He should be grateful that's all I did."

Something about the words hit Richard in real time. Like he just now registered that Sam was here, not an illusion.

Richard's eyes fluttered. The blood on his chin sharpened in colour thanks to the loss of it inside his skin.

"Oh no, you don't." Sam caught him under the elbow before his knees buckled, lowering him gently to a seated position on the floor. "Easy, Richard."

Richard nodded his thanks and focused on Sam's chest, the noisy breathing pattern. Not exactly the most reassuring sound. But it was steady. Richard seemed to need steady. After a minute, his body mirrored the motion and he let his head fall back against a shelf.

The bag trembled in his hand.

"You're safe, Richard." Magic words. Forever the magic words that released that guarded rebar in Richard's spine. Sam crouched and examined the inflamed marks along Richard's neck, handing him a spare bandage from one of the shelves to hold to his nose. "You hear me? I'm right here. He's not hurting you anymore. This is never happening again."

Richard looked up through his bangs.

"Gonna check you out, okay?"

Richard didn't reply, but he also didn't fight while Sam rifled under the lab coat and cupped those bony ribs and fought not to go back over and bash Myers' face in. Ginger patting revealed no cracked or broken bones, other than some light bruising, judging by Richard's slight flinch. Tiny muscles protecting his ribs quivered at the dissipation of unused adrenaline. Sam thumbed them until they calmed.

After a quick call on his cellphone to CPD and Kathy downstairs, Sam turned back to his friend.

"He does this often? The Matlock routine?"

"At least every other day." Richard's voice was hollow. He curled up further so he was in Sam's shadow. Sam's molars ached, icy, from clenching at the back.

"Bastard."

"I'm sorry."

"No." Sam growled it. "You don't apologize today. Not for him. You've done absolutely nothing wrong."

"But I told you I could take care of my own battles."

"And you can." Sam had seen the man with a lead pipe. "You're a fighter, Richard. Don't need my help for that. You coulda sent him running back to his hole with one swipe."

The unasked question hung in the air. One that kept Sam awake into the wee hours of the morning and haunted the space on his couch where Richard slept that night.

Those reactions had never been just trauma.

"Didn't punch him back because…" Richard's features skewed. Suddenly went lax. "I didn't want to be what they thought I was. Violent, causing harm. Nobody takes me seriously now anyway, not even my boss when I mentioned it."

Great, now Sam's breathing was all over the place.

"Dr. Myers wanted me to quit," Richard confessed in a teeny tiny voice. "To give up my practice. This was all about pressuring me into that."

"You didn't kill Helen, Richard." An obvious truth, one that pealed like an ancient bell between their ragged bodies, but somehow it needed stating. It used to ring in Sam's brain for hours at a time, while combing through his case file.

"I know. But I didn't see a way to get him to stop without being the villain everyone thinks I am."

Sam rested his elbows on Richard's bent knees, arms crossed in the middle. "Vishnu doesn't think you're a villain. Kathy doesn't. My team doesn't. Those doctors in the staff lounge might have but they don't now."

"Yeah?" Richard's eyes glittered under the lone bulb.

"Yeah, Richard. It's just Myers left."

"And CPD."

Sam shook his head. "You leave those clowns to me. When they get here, I'll stay with you while you give a statement."

Richard's gaze cycled to that distant-place-only-he-could-see quality, when he shed his strong front and let himself process. It was an old look, senior citizen Richard in just-past-middle-aged Richard's body. "Get called the monster long enough and sometimes you believe it."

"I don't believe it." Sam tapped his khaki clad knee with a tender pinky.

"That's why I came to your house that night."

"Instead of the police precinct," Sam finished, realizing the truth right as it came out of his mouth. "You were going to tell them about the abuse."

"I tried but was too scared. I knew they wouldn't believe me, just like they didn't about the one-armed man." Richard's tone wilted, pleading. "Why did you believe me when they didn't?"

The lightning was still there, Sam discovered. Inside his cheeks now so they stung. "I told you, because your file didn't make sense."

Richard's eyes tracked fully to the present and fully onto Sam. "You believed me before you even read my case file."

Another truth, this one less obvious on the surface.

Sam rested his chin on his forearms. Richard's heartbeat through his knee telegraphed into Sam's elbow. "Maybe."

"Believing someone is not a maybe. It's a black and white thing and you always take me seriously."

Sam glossed over that statement and set a hand on Richard's hair. "You feelin' dizzy at all? Any head injuries I should know about?"

"I'm good." Richard opened his mouth after a pause, and Sam fortified himself for more prying questions.

Instead, Richard sniffed and asked—"Why is there cake on the floor?"

Sam looked to the side and what do you know. He must have dropped the cake in his haste to get to Richard. The plastic lid had popped off and now chocolate and vanilla icing splattered the cement floor.

"Today's a special date."

Richard frowned. "My birthday's not for another two months. I'm a New Year's Eve baby."

"Not your birthday." Sam smiled at the cake, war zone though it was now. "Today marks a year since you jumped off the dam."

"The…" Richard did a double take at him. "The dam."

"The very same."

"You're celebrating that?"

"No, we're celebrating that."

"Why? Because I grabbed your gun and almost died?"

Sam had prepared a lovely soliloquy to explain this. Practiced it on the drive over and everything. How to explain why such an asinine moment meant so much to him?

"Because that marked the start."

Richard wiggled his toes inside his shoes and Sam felt it through tendons in his knee. "The start?"

"Of…" Sam gestured between them and mentally railed at his lack of eloquence.

"Oh." Richard understood it, like he always did with Sam. A little, anyway. "And here I am ruining the party. Kind of fits the theme, doesn't it?"

Sam palmed his cheek, tapping it in a barely-there motion to keep it as far from reminiscence of a slap as possible. "Worth it."

Richard held his eyes for a moment, until he stopped shaking. Sam shuffled to the side to retrieve the stethoscope. He held it out, palm up. An offer but not a demand.

"You should never feel scared at work, of all places. You belong here, Richard. Nobody gets to say otherwise."

Richard eyed the stethoscope, weightier in Sam's hand than it should have felt. Sam didn't rush the tumult behind Richard's eyes. Such vibrant eyes, a cosmos Sam both loved and fought to read. Their colour changed with the lighting, and sometimes when he laughed they were a different shade altogether.

Spindly fingers closed around the stethoscope and its disk in a drawn out motion, Richard's stare first on it, then Sam once the device was coiled back around his neck.

"And no one gets to give you flak for chasing me." Richard softened. "Not even you."

The heart of it laid bare, in part, and Sam couldn't have found words if he wanted to. He didn't regret doing his job, hunting Richard down for those six months—especially since by the end it was for the doc's own protection—but he did regret how impulsive the desire to be face-to-face with Richard and hear his side of the story made him act.

He was saved from answering by the door flinging open for a second time in one afternoon. Kathy stood there, wild eyed, leading a string of cops.

She took in the scene: the man on the ground, Sam huddled over Richard in a protective stance and the blood all over her friend and soaked bandage and…

Her nose wrinkled. "What's with the cake on the floor?"

~OL~

"Hey. I know you…"

Sam's jaw firmed. He turned from directing an officer where she cuffed a groggy and barely consciousness Myers.

The young cop pointed with his pen. "You're the Richard Kimble."

"Unfortunately," said Richard drily.

The cop lit up. "Oh man, I'm a huge admirer. Mad respect, sir, for how you survived all those months on your own."

Both Richard and Sam gawked for a moment. Then they met each other's eyes and Richard's twinkled; Sam got the distinct impression he found this all rather hilarious.

"Wasn't quite on my own, but thanks."

"Sappy nutcase," Sam muttered. Richard just poked him with a smile.

If Sam had any worries about CPD being partial against Richard, suspicious of his presence in a hospital, let alone taking his assault claim seriously—he didn't now. Not only was Myers' slurred vitriol and string of curses enough to get him on a verbal assault charge, making the five cops scowl at him, but even CPD couldn't argue with the blood dripping all over Richard's face.

The enthused cop finished jotting notes. "We'll type up a formal version of your statement, Doctor. Are you okay if we take a few photos?"

"Photos?" asked Richard.

"As evidence in case this goes to court."

"It will," Myers snarled. Another officer joined the first to restrain him from either side, marching him out the door. "I'm going to sue you into Sunday, Kimble."

Sam's fingertips sizzled, enough for him to step forward with the scar along his forehead aching. Raw. Backlit and inflamed like his anger.

Richard beat him to it, like he usually did. He, by contrast, just sounded tired. "I might like to see you try. You're arrogant, Brian. And a malpractice suit waiting to happen—some of these injuries nearly hampered my ability to operate."

"You have them all fooled." Myers lowered his voice to a hiss. "But not me. I know what you are."

"And what's that?" Kathy scoffed. So far she'd been content to stand off to the side, arms folded, and aim a laser beam glare at Myers. "Richard is a good man, far better than you'll ever be."

"Dangerous, a menace to everyone here."

Richard dipped his chin but not his eyes, cherry bomb sparks in the dark cavern of his eyes. Sam was reminded that Richard—not him—beat up Nichols that night. Years on the job had taught Sam how to control ire, for all that he had more of it than Richard.

But the doctor's, while slower to come, stoked hotter.

Richard bunched his fists. "Bold words coming from a pediatrician who hurts people in secret."

Myers sneered. "You'd know something about that, wouldn't you? Helen, wasn't that her name?"

Richard moved so fast Sam didn't even see it. One millisecond he gazed back at Richard and the next he wasn't there. Kathy gasped.

Thunk!

Richard knocked Myers' chest with a flat palm. Right over his heart and away. So hard that Myers coughed a breath and his spine hit the door frame. "No, I don't. Because unlike you I take care of the people in my life."

The lead cop caught Sam's eye, ashen with shock. Part of Sam wanted to pull Richard back, so this couldn't be used against him in court, and another didn't have the heart. This was Richard's fight now and he didn't dare interrupt any closure his friend might need.

Richard shook Myers once by his lapel and then let go. "Get this man out of my sight…before I do something I regret."

"Ditto," Kathy breathed, shaking.

The cop taking notes did so, once he finished gaping at Richard in amazement and no small degree of awe. Only three photos were taken, one of the room's blood stains and two at different angles of Richard's damaged face. He didn't blink for any of it, staring hard at Myers' back as he was carted away, like he'd magically escape if Richard didn't maintain focus.

A familiar feeling, really.

"Richard?" Sam stepped up beside his friend, who thumbed at his empty ring finger and finally stopped baring his teeth.

"I'm fine."

"You gonna go postal on me?"

"No, don't think so. That…That felt pretty good, actually. Haven't hit someone in a long time."

"That I do know."

"I wanted to stab him but…"

Sam eyed blood on Richard's flared nostrils. "Your restraint is admirable. Pretty sure Kathy still might."

They watched her lead the cops and Myers to the elevator, being read his Miranda rights. She lectured Myers the whole way, flagging down a passing nurse to grab someone from HR, veins popped.

"I'm proud of you, Richard."

Richard ran a hand through his hair, which only made it stick up more. "Oh yeah? For what, getting pushed around almost every day?"

Sam shook his head at the dismal tone. He removed his red scarf and christened it around Richard's abused neck to shelter the bruising where a few buttons had torn off in the struggle, tasseled ends overlapped. Then he patted Richard's chest with a glass worker's touch, ever so careful as it rubbed a circle. Richard flushed at the gift more than the physical gesture.

"For accepting help. For not kicking us out of the lunch room that first day we showed up. For being willing to trust someone after everything."

"Thanks for…" Richard circled a hand. "It's easier, when it's you and your team. You're the best I've ever met."

"Takes one to know one."