Lena takes the coward's way out. She avoids him. Like now, when she's hiding in her CHU with her laptop instead of in her office, where he'd look for her. Because he'd look, and that's the hard part.

There'd been no 'buck up' or 'power through' or 'you'll have to learn to deal with it', just 'it's fine you know' when she'd tried to apologize for finally losing it. The kindness had been humiliating, like it made sense that she'd cry over it. It had felt like all she'd done was confirm the worst stereotypes of her gender. She hadn't even felt like crying until after walking out of the house. All that mattered at the time was getting away from the Sharifs and everyone who was looking at her like she was a two-bit slut for showing them her stomach. Lena rolls her eyes at the memory. Oh the horror. But then she'd seen the line of bodies in the driveway. They'd bled out elsewhere, so there was no blood to be seen then. Their faces had been so pale, like Parisa. And just like that the tears had just come, like an ambush from the back of her mind, and she'd been wholly unprepared for it.

Did he mean it was fine to cry or fine because that's what they expect out of women? It wasn't that she couldn't handle it. She hadn't just stood there in a panic when she'd found Parisa on the back porch, dang it; she'd acted. Lena closes her eyes and falls back against her pillow, reliving the mortification of having shrieked for him. The last time a sound like that had come out of her mouth there'd been a snake involved.

Hauling herself upright, Lena tries anew to focus on reading her emails.

But Tim next to her had felt so nice, even if he had smelled like complete ass because he hadn't bathed in nearly a week. Solid, warm. Very nice shoulders. But this is Afghanistan, and you have to be a big girl, and big girls don't have themselves a good cry on the shoulders of handsome Ranger sergeants who are too nice to them. Because a shoulder to cry on becomes…nope. No. No, it does not.

Watch out for the man meat boss. She's been repeating Oona's warning like a mantra. Even if he were interested – and to be fair she's mostly sure he's not indifferent – it doesn't mean much when she's only one of the very scarce available vaginas in a sausage fest. Just because he's polite doesn't mean he's interested in anything aside from a quick, means-nothing fuck. Not that anything besides that is even practical. Bugger. She's reading a report from Oona and has managed, yet again, to lose her train of thought.

Lena sets her laptop on the bed and does a few jumping jacks, the better to shake off distracting thoughts. She has other things to be excited about. Like the fact that she finally, finally, after four odd months has a piece, a tiny, golden shred of something truly and concretely useful. Turns out Miriam Sharif is far easier to emotionally blackmail than her husband.

As part of her send off before her first stint in Afghanistan, Oona had insisted on going out and getting shitfaced, fall down wasted before Lena headed into 'a place dryer than America's cooch during prohibition.' At some point in the evening the goal changed to Lena having a drunken fling ('something to fantasize about so you remember not to fuck anyone in a uniform'). Keith had been fun, but their time together wasn't extraordinary enough to fantasize about. It wasn't bad as drunken hookups go. But they were both horrifically inebriated. The most memorable part was the novelty of doing it in a club bathroom (now she knows why only college kids bother with that anymore).

A month into her recovery after having a section of Humvee door removed from her liver Lena, out of sheer boredom, had picked up her medical chart and discovered that it hadn't been the food at the DFAC putting her stomach into a funk. It was weird, reading about it when it was already over. It hadn't even been three months. If not for bored curiosity she'd never have known about it at all. Lena had sat quietly for some moments waiting for shock to set in, to feel the horror that would have been normal upon such a discovery. The nurse who came to change her IV had been horrified, but Lena had said calmly that it was fine. And she'd meant it too. She'd tried to dredge up sadness, something, anything appropriate, but all she'd come up with was relief, and then guilt for the inability to muster anything else.

If Clarence ever asks she'll say it was a perfect lie, and he'll believe it was a brilliant bit of improvisation on her part. And in a way it was a perfect lie. Miriam Sharif believes that Faheen's violence knowingly resulted in a miscarriage and that that is the fuel feeding Lena's insatiable drive to find him. There is no religion in which the murder of children goes unpunished.

And now Lena has a city. Technically Miriam had only given her a district, Surobi, but the largest town, also called Surobi, would be the best place to hide. However, at only 22,000 people, it would be too noticeable for Lena to search herself, or Clarence. Lena doesn't want to spook Faheen by sending in soldiers on some sort of BS humanitarian mission, not that they would be able to do a proper search of 22,000 odd people quickly enough, so now she has to wait for Faisal, one of Clarence's people and a native Dari speaker to fly in. Clarence has already vouched for the man, but Lena is loath to trust someone she's never met with something so important, especially when she is so very close. Or at least it feels close. Maybe she's jinxing it. She hopes – she would very much appreciate it if – the universe is kind enough not to throw a wrench into the cogs.

Luckily, the universe has blessed her with Oona, who has –

The sudden pounding on her door interrupts Lena as she attempts the fifth read-through of her assistant's report. Fudge. Well, maybe the mental break will do her good.

Lena opens the door.

This is not a mental break.

"Tim." Double fudge.

"Hey." He looks around at everything except her. Lena resists the urge to follow his eyes around her room and hopes she hasn't left any underwear lying about. "Wanna do somethin' fun?"

Yes. No. "Yes."

"Come on then," he says when she doesn't move. Right. Lena hops up, surreptitiously glancing around the room to make sure nothing embarrassing is on display (nothing is), and slips on her shoes.

"Seriously?"

"What?"

"What happened to your boots?"

She waves at the corner. "Over there."

He leans against her door frame and pulls a face as if to say And?

"Well what are we doing?"

"It's a surprise." Her chest warms and her stomach does something funny at the way he says that.

"This surprise include running, jumping, and/or climbing?"

"…No."

"So I don't really need the boots."

"You don't need high heels."

"What's wrong with these?"

"I have a list, but it's too heavy to carry around with me."

"The boots don't go with these pants." She grins playfully.

"Not that your bent towards the ridiculous isn't entertaining, but put on the boots." That last sounds too much like an order, and something prickles along her back.

This is a well-trodden argument between them, but normally after one or two jibes the matter drops. The longer he nags, the more she feels the need to dig her heels in. It shouldn't be so dang hard for him to accept that she likes these ones and that she'll wear what she dang well pleases.

"Well maybe I like these better."

"You like walking around with torture devices on your feet?"

"They're not torture devices; they're shoes."

"It might be time to reacquaint yourself with a dictionary. Shoes are under S."

"Oh come on," she says, a little fed up, "just deal with it."

"Jesus Christ, you on your period or somethin'?"

Lena slams the door in his face.

The previously warm feeling that had grown in her chest upon seeing him is gone, replaced by hardened ice.

"My god, Lena, are you on your period?"

"You wreck my brother's bike – after I fucking told you not to drive it – and then have the fucking gall to ask me if I'm on my period?!"

"It's not like it was yours. Besides, he should have insurance. It's just not that a big deal."

"Yeah, because that makes it alright. Fuck you, Jerry!"

Lena had come home after work to find James waiting on her front porch with a brand new Ducati Sport. He'd been on tour in Italy and 'just picked one up,' and did she want to ride it? Since she had a garage and he didn't feel like leaving it in the hotel parking lot, James had left the bike at her place. Two days later, her (very much ex) boyfriend had crashed it showing off to his friends.

And of course she'd been the hormonal shrew for getting angry when he took what she didn't want to give. He'd wanted absolution and that had been the easiest path. In the beginning she'd liked Jerry for his impulsive, adventurous side. After that incident, she realized it was too close to selfish childishness.

And now here she is, her existence and thought processes once again reduced to nothing but hormonal whimsy. It's like being in Victorian England when every disagreeable trait in a woman was explained away as 'hysteria.' Helpfully, her mind flashes back to her sobbing outside of Sharif's house, and the humiliation is enough to wring a different sort of tears from her. She angrily scrubs them away, annoyed at the irony of her shame bringing about an encore of its own cause.

Later, when the anger has abated, Lena is left with disappointment. All that time, shared conversation and cups of coffee…that adorable boyish smile, sometimes shy, sometimes a brash, impish grin…and this was tucked in there with it. The number of friends she now has is cut by half. She likes Clarence, but there is – was – something relaxing about being around Tim that she doesn't feel with the Englishman.

Lena returns to her work, determined to use it as a means to forget her ill mood. At least, she thinks, without her wish to see him, it should be easier to focus.

It is not easier to focus.

This sort of anger, the disappointed, frustrated, wish-she'd-said-something-scathing-back-to-him-and-had-the-last-word anger simmers and bubbles, occasionally splattering her thoughts with bile, and after a few hours of stewing and fuming, Lena snaps her laptop shut, opens it, closes it once again with deliberate gentleness, and leaves to go for a walk.

o.O.o

He feels like someone stuck a fishhook in his stomach yanked everything sideways. One second he'd been full of excited anticipation, and the next she'd shut a door in his face.

At first he thinks it's a joke, that the door will open; she'll roll her eyes, say something smart, and come out with him as he'd planned.

The door doesn't open.

Fuck.

It had just slipped out. Pascal hadn't stopped bitching earlier about the PX being out of his favorite Gatorade flavor, and Tim had asked him sarcastically when he was gonna be off his period or if they'd all have to keep listening to him whine about it. It was the last conversation he'd had and the closest thing to mind, so right off his dipshit tongue it rolled.

Tim stares at the door. He doesn't know what to do. There's a hot pressure building in his chest and nowhere for it to go. Lena should know him well enough to get that it was just teasing, no insult intended. He begins to resent that apparently she doesn't know at all.

His pride keeps him from knocking, from trying to apologize. He almost does it. He wants to see the look on her face when he shows her. Tim knows when he gets back to the barracks he'll regret not knocking, but his anger is enough to carry him away.

On the way back to the barracks he texts Danny. It's vague, just that something's come up because he doesn't want to explain in person that he crashed and burned with the girl he was gonna bring by.

Danny's training some of the ANA guys on a Howitzer and promised Tim that he'd let Lena have a go at it. Tim kicks a rock like it did him wrong. She'd have liked firing a Howitzer. But Danny…Kelsey was never really fond of the guy, and he knows what would have happened if he let Lena show up wearing high heels. Tim's allowed – was allowed – to give her shit for it, but he isn't certain how she'd react to criticism from a stranger. It would have just been easier.

He tries to slink back into the barracks unnoticed, but the guys are gathered around the XBox playing Halo.

"Yo!" Carter calls out, waving a controller in his direction. Tim tries to brush him off.

"Who pissed in your coffee?" Clark asks. His mood darkens further. He's come to associate Lena with coffee.

"Maybe he just started his period," Pascal says, mimicking Tim's earlier jab.

Tim snatches the controller from Carter and spends several rounds camping the shit out of Pascal.