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

Author's note: when I say that Unfinished Business is my least favorite episode, I mean that it's internally inconsistent. I don't like that Lee goes rogue and vigilante. I prefer aspects of the script, where shooting Blackthorn is in unquestionable self-defense. I LOVE the glimpses of his parents. I just wish the episode had meshed better with Lee's character development up to that point.


Prologue: Unfinished Business Part 1

He did what he always did whenever too many people knew his home address: he moved. It was usually after some kind of threat to his life or personal safety.

This time it wasn't a threat that made him move. He just wanted a place that had a separate bedroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Oh, who was he kidding?

He didn't want an apartment with any connections to any woman other than Amanda. He wanted a place that was theirs exclusively, with enough space to hang out with Phillip and Jamie and be a family. He wanted to be able to hang up the drawing they'd gotten from Emily, of the two of them with the ghost castle.

He wanted a home.

He left a lot of things behind when he moved, things that had bad memories attached to them. He left the couch where Brackin had surprised him, along with almost all of the rest of the furniture. He kept a lamp or two, his desk, and all the boxes of case-related junk he'd shuffled from apartment to apartment for years. He brought the boxes of decorations and souvenirs he'd collected all over the world, but he didn't really bother unpacking most of them. They fit better in a bachelor pad than here.

He kept the bed, too. It had an amazing mattress, and it had only good or indifferent memories to go with it — memories that included Amanda stroking his face during Operation Barnstorm when she'd put him to bed like a stubborn toddler. Crucially, it didn't carry any memories of anyone else, though it hadn't been intentional back when he was dating Randi or Leslie.

With the concept of "home" solidifying around him, he found himself dwelling more and more on his last real home — the little house he had lived in with his parents until he was five years old. He didn't remember them too well. Bits and pieces of memory and information: that was all that was left of Matthew and Jennifer Stetson.

When the nightmares returned, the nightmares he thought he had kicked years ago, he knew he had to do something about it. He couldn't start a life with Amanda with unfinished business still left over.

He started digging.