It was fortunate for the sake of their friendship, Amanda thought with a small smile, that Dr. Kelford had given Lee the all-clear for at least small amounts of coffee and alcohol by the fifth day. It wasn't that Lee required the stimulation, it was just that they were a part of his routine and he was getting increasingly antsy as the days passed and Billy refused to even let him near the building. At least now they could kill time walking to the coffee shop or browsing at his favorite shop for the perfect wine for their dinner.

The healthier he had gotten, the harder it was to keep him from climbing the walls and as he'd rebounded from the concussion and the mild infection from the knife wound, Amanda had gone from nurse to den mother with the ease of long practice. Lee, obviously unpracticed at the art of relaxing, was, for once, doing his best to behave and she'd soon realized the best idea was just to let him have his head and be prepared to pull back on the reins if he got too carried away.

Today the distraction had taken the form of letting him make dinner after a trip the gourmet grocery store in Maclean. Her offer to actually bring dinner from the Blue Fox to counteract the domesticity of home-cooked meals had turned into him insisting that it was time he return the favor and cook for her instead. Since it kept him busy and clear of anything dangerous except sharp kitchen knives, she'd put up only a token resistance, beyond demanding a veto over the menu. She hadn't forgotten that weird squid dish he'd made her as a 'treat' years ago and wasn't about to test those culinary limits again. After she turned her nose up at his joking offer to cook zebra steaks from the exotic food department, Lee had settled on making some kind of complicated Italian dish that –thankfully – kept him busy for most of the afternoon, chopping and prepping, telling her stories about his time pretending to be a grad student in Venice, even able to make little references to Eva without difficulty.

They'd talked about her once, in the aftermath of the Black Book Incident, as she still thought of it, when she'd sat with him watching him methodically tear out the pages out of those notebooks and feed them into a shredder in the Q Bureau.

"Won't you need those?" she asked, forcing herself to try and sound like she was teasing, even though she was silently cheering, relieved that it might be a sign he'd put those days behind him.

"No, the people in here aren't real," he answered absently, then looked up at her noise of distress.

"Cheryl was real," she said, the disquiet in her voice all too clear as she remembered that poor woman slumping dead in front of her.

Lee had stared at her, an expression of dismay on his face. "Oh God, I didn't mean it that way. I mean, of course she was real – and that's why I need to get rid of these. These books are really just lists of girls Andy and I dated as cover – girls from the steno pool that we took out on double dates, flirted with, hung around parties with – anything to keep the image going of just two guys on the social scene. But they never signed up for anything like this, and now, just by knowing me, some of them are dead!" He stared down at the half-destroyed booklet in his hand. "They were just nice girls that were fun to spend time with – I used them and some of them paid a hell of a price for it."

"Well, you hardly used them – I'm sure they enjoyed any time they spent with you," she said, but couldn't help asking, "There really isn't anybody, not even in four books, that you'd consider a friend?"

"Oh no," he answered. "I had to keep notes on people I barely knew, but important people? Those people are all up here." He tapped his head and gave her a tight smile. "I could still tell you all sorts of things about Dorothy or Eva without having to think about it, even after all these years."

He seemed to be in a peculiar mood and she'd ventured to ask something out loud that she'd only wondered about before. "Lee? How did Dorothy fit in? I mean, I thought you and Andy met in training?"

"We did – and we fought like cats and dogs," Lee laughed. "It was pretty obvious in hindsight later that we were both really just fighting our attraction, but it was 1973 and well, neither of us could chance outing ourselves so we never acted on any of it. Anyway, Paul recruited me and Dorothy to his team and we got close. She was sweet and pretty and we were thrown together a lot and since we were young, it went the way it inevitably does… Paul wasn't too happy about it but as long as it didn't interfere in our work, he turned a blind eye." He sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring at the office ceiling. "It was just kid stuff really, but then when she was killed, the Oz network was disbanded and I was sent back to regular field work, and partnered with Andy. I didn't want a partner – of course – especially not him… so it was pretty rocky at first, but we were both older and wiser by then and he was the only one who put up with me lashing out at everything and everyone."

"Sounds familiar," she said before she could stop herself.

"Yeah, well I've been lucky twice now that someone came along to care enough drag me out of that dark place," he answered, dropping his gaze to look at her. "Very lucky."

She shrugged with embarrassment. "I wasn't fishing for compliments, Lee."

"I know," he said in that gentle warm tone she thought was reserved for her. "But it's still true." He gave a deep sigh and went back to the story. "Anyway, partnership turned to friendship and eventually friendship turned to…" His voice drifted off momentarily.

"Love," Amanda couldn't help finishing the sentence.

"Yeah." He'd gone back to staring at the ceiling but continued to talk softly. "And six years later, he was…gone." The silence stretched out, Amanda unable to figure out how to break it when he suddenly went on. "And then came the alcohol-fueled emotional car crash that almost wiped out my career." He glanced at her briefly. "There was a reason people bought it when I played a burnout, you know – it had come close to happening before, but that time, it was Francine who tried to pick me up and get me moving again, which led to some very poor life-choices for both of us."

"Oh boy."

"Oh boy indeed. And it went just about as well as you'd expect, and then Billy sent me off to Venice on a six-month mission to get me the hell out of everyone's way before I made two of us wreck our careers instead of just me… and I met Eva. Frying pan meet fire."

"Oh my gosh, that's awful," she said sympathetically.

"I do love your talent for understatement, Mrs. King." Lee's eyes came back to meet hers and to her relief, his were crinkling with laughter. "Here I am, pouring out my guts again for the second time in a week and you sum it up with 'that's awful'?" He chuckled and began dropping pages into the shredder again. "And then I came home, declared I was never going to do that again, added another book to the collection, met a crazy woman who refuses to listen to a word I say - and here we are."

Amanda glanced over at the roses he'd given her earlier that day. "Yeah, here we are," she echoed.

"That was a fantastic dinner, Lee."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it – I'd gotten out of the habit of doing anything beyond the basics. Not much fun cooking for one."

"I know what you mean. Some days I could scream when I try something different and the boys turn their noses up and ask why we couldn't have just had meatloaf."

"Small boys are heathens," he laughed. "But the good news is, a lot of us outgrow it."

"Well, if I could get them to grow out of it without growing up, I'd be set."

"You don't want them to grow up and get out from under your feet?"

"Oh well, I mean I'd like them to leave the nest at some point, sure, but right now they're still my babies and I want to hang onto to that for just a bit longer. I'll miss being the mom who can solve all their problems."

"Well, think of all the extra hours you got in this week babysitting me," joked Lee. "And in light of that, we should toast your imminent freedom from diaper duty." Lee handed her a small shot glass of faintly colored liquid. "Here try this – I think you'll like it."

There was something there that set the alarm bells ringing in her head, but it wasn't until she lifted the glass and drank it that she pinned down that fluttering shadow. The slightly bitter flavor of the schnapps hit her taste buds and her entire body revolted in an instant of sensory memory.

Lee watched horrified as she lost all the color in her face before dashing from the table. He chased after her as she ricocheted off the bathroom door, falling to her knees in front of the toilet, retching uncontrollably. He dropped to his knees too, pulling her hair back out of the way as her slight body heaved, emptying her stomach until there was nothing left. Even then, she was wracked with dry heaves, gasping as she tried to catch her breath in between.

"Oh my God, Amanda! What did I do?"

He reached for a facecloth, running it under the tap and wringing out before beginning to carefully sponge her cheeks, while she leaned into the hand he had placed against the back of her neck. To his relief, she was getting some color back, but she had the faint feverish sheen on her skin from the ferocity of her body's revolt and she was shivering as if she was going into shock. He leaned over the sink again, grabbing a glass and filling it with cold water, holding it out tentatively. For a moment, her expression looked like she was going to be sick again but then she took it, sipping carefully and swishing her mouth out and spitting it into the toilet several times before falling back against the tub wall. He filled the glass again and watched as she drank this one down.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, now beginning to look embarrassed.

"It's fine," he said soothingly. "Feeling better?"

When she nodded, he reached to flush the toilet to rid the room of the smell of vomit, fearing it would make her sick again, and at the sound, she began trying to push herself upright. He scrambled to his feet to help her up, only to have her sag against him after a few steps, so he scooped her up and carried her the last few feet back to the sofa, setting her down on it and then sitting down beside her, drawing her in to rest against him, trying to hold her lightly enough for her to catch her breath but close enough to give comfort.

She rested there in his arms for a few moments, as he waited for her breath to slow and the trembling to stop.

"I'm sorry," she said again brokenly, voice scratchy like she was on the verge of tears. "It wasn't your cooking, honest." She gave a slightly hysterical giggle and added, "I'm sorry I wasted all your effort."

"My God, Amanda, if it wasn't my cooking, what the hell was it?" He began rocking her slightly in his arms, relieved that whatever it was seemed to have passed.

"It was the schnapps," she whispered. "That's what she gave me. That's what I couldn't remember. I told Claudia I couldn't remember what it was and I couldn't until just now and then it all came back." Another embarrassed sob, "And then dinner came back too. I'm sorry."

"I'm not following you. It was what who gave you?"

"The other Lee." It was so quiet he barely heard her, but he froze all the same.

"The other Lee?" he asked carefully, trying not to spook her. "There's another one?"

There was a quiet sob against his chest and he tightened his arms around her. "It's okay," he soothed her. "It's okay." He took a deep breath and tried to sound as neutral as he could. "Do you want to talk about it?"

There was a long silence and then finally, a quiet "Yes".

"Okay then," he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "So who is the other Lee and what did she give you that made you that sick?"

Amanda took a deep breath and pushed herself off his shoulder, turning to sit up and wipe her eyes. It took her a few minutes to regain her composure and then she'd turned to face him again, leaving space between them and staring down at her lap. Worried again, he reached over to take her hand, and to his relief, she didn't pull away; rather she lay her other hand on top of his and started to quietly tell him the whole story, never looking up.

"Do you remember when I was arrested for counterfeiting in Munich?" she began. "Do you remember me telling you I met a woman there? A woman who called herself Lee?"

It took a long time and a few pauses for hiccupping sobs but Amanda finally told him what had really happened with Leslie. She never called her by that name, in fact after that first instance, she never referred to her as anything but 'she' and she certainly never told him about his unwitting involvement in being exposed to her again. He was glad she wasn't looking at him as the full horror of it slowly hit him. From what Leslie had said, and the throwaway reference to the bite mark in the German police report, he had always assumed it had been a slightly more than humiliating drunken groping incident that she was ashamed to admit to, not this, not a lengthy attack while she was drugged and unconscious. Not something so traumatizing that she'd repressed it for over a year, and never told a soul. Not rape.

He could feel the bile rising in his own throat and fought to control it.

Her voice, husky at the best of times, had gotten tighter as she got to the end and he knew she was barely hanging on by a thread. He knew he should say something comforting or sympathetic or sensitive but instead found himself snarling the first thing that came into his head.

"That fucking bitch. I should have killed her."

For the first time, Amanda's eyes jerked up to meet his, with a shocked expression at the language he'd used and too late he remembered he wasn't supposed to know who had done this.

"I should have been there," he amended it quickly, "I should have been with you – and if I can ever get my hands on her, I'm going to kill her."

Amanda gave a short gasping laugh. "Francine said you'd react like that."

"Wait - Francine knew about all this?" Lee tried not to sound hurt but he couldn't imagine any scenario where Francine would have been her confidante of choice, or why he wasn't after all they'd been through together. Or why Francine hadn't come to him either for that matter.

"Oh!" Amanda gasped hearing that note in his voice. "Not the whole time! I didn't even mean to tell her – it just sort of came out a few weeks back because I was telling her I should quit because of that whole thing with Karl Eagles-"

"You were going to quit?" he interrupted, momentarily distracted.

"I wasn't, not really, but I was tired and upset because I was starting to have trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys and she said of course I could and I said that if that were true, I wouldn't have been…" she trailed off, back to looking anywhere but at him, unable to say the word.

"Is that why she wanted you to talk to Claudia?"

"Y-y-yes. I hadn't told anyone about it – she gave me a whole lecture about how I should have talked to someone at the time." She stole a quick glance up at him, recognizing that growling sound he was making. "Don't be mad at her – she told me weeks ago I should have told you too."

"She did?" Now that surprised him – Francine was such a stoic herself, he couldn't imagine her encouraging anyone else to be otherwise.

"Well, she thought it was bad for our, uhhhh, partnership that you didn't know. She thought we were, um…"

It was the note of discomfort in Amanda's voice that suddenly shed light on that conversation with Francine during that drive home.

"So that's what she meant," he muttered, flushing when Amanda looked at him questioningly. "I got a lecture from her too - about being a better partner. How I should protect you better from office gossip, that kind of thing."

"You're a great partner," she leapt to his defense. "And you're the most protective person I know."

He shifted closer to her, trying to be gentle as he wrapped his arms around her, letting out a breath of relief when she returned the embrace, leaning against him for support.

"Not when it mattered. I should have been there," he repeated helplessly. "I should have been there to protect you."

"Lee, it was a simple courier run. There shouldn't have been anything to protect me from. It wasn't even something that happened while I was working. And even if it had been, it's just part of the normal risk, like any other danger in this job."

"That is not part of the normal risk, Amanda! There is a difference between what we sometimes have to do on a mission and what happened to you! Our job isn't some stupid James Bond movie." He wanted to shake some sense into her, but settled for hugging her a bit tighter.

"It's always a risk when you're a woman, Lee. That's practically the first thing Francine said when it all came out that day – 'it's happened to all of us'.

Somehow that made it worse, that resigned acceptance in her voice, coupled with his own sudden recognition of all the times Francine had been sent off to do the flirt-and-bait routine with nothing but teasing jokes from him. How often had one of those 'dates' gone bad and she'd never told him?

"I'm so sorry," he murmured against her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," she answered, then quickly corrected herself. "Well, no, it's not okay, but I'm okay. I'm going to be okay. Claudia thinks the worst is over as far as starting to recover goes, now that I'm dealing with it."

"Seeing Dr. Joyce's been helping?" he asked quietly.

"She's been wonderful. Francine too, which I didn't expect. You'd think she'd be all snippy and using it to make me feel stupid and instead it's like I've finally passed the hazing to join some club of people she approves of. She's been really supportive – like trying to convince me I still have good instincts."

"You do have good instincts," said Lee. "I depend on them all the time. Right from the first day we met."

Amanda laughed softly and lifted her head to look at him. "That's what I keep coming back to, you know. When I start to think about how I didn't see what people like Alan Squires was like, or Sinclair or her, I remind myself I wasn't wrong about you. And that didn't turn out half bad."

"No, it sure didn't" he agreed quietly. She smiled and her face seemed to almost glow then, even through the smudged mascara and the tear stains on her cheeks. His heart did its customary skip at the sight of that smile, and he was very lucky indeed that she dropped her head back on his chest to hug him, because if she hadn't, he would very likely have given into that overwhelming temptation, and he knew, with very little consideration, that this would be a terrible, terrible time to finally tell her how he felt.

I love you, Amanda.

Amanda, emotionally and physically exhausted by everything that had just happened, leaned against him, forcing herself not to look up again and meet those eyes that barely concealed his emotions when he was upset. She couldn't bear to see the pity or worse, the possibility of disgust as what she'd told him began to sink home. Afraid too that he'd be able to read her thoughts in her face and think it was just an emotional reaction.

I love you.

She sat up, and took a deep breath. "I should go."

"No, you should stay."

He understood her look of shock for what it was but he was panicking at the idea of letting her out of his sight right now. "I mean it. You should stay here tonight. You probably shouldn't be driving and if you go home, your mother will see you've been upset."

"And what will she think if I don't come home at all?"

He was relieved when she didn't just refuse outright and rushed to capitalize on it. "Call and tell her you've had too much to drink and you're going to stay with that friend you've been looking after all week. That's practically the truth."

Amanda studied him for a moment, seeing the plea in his eyes.

"Amanda, you can't just drop all that on me and leave. The boys aren't home, you don't have to go home. Please – just stay."

He wasn't sure he was getting through to her until suddenly she nodded. "Okay - on one condition."

"Junior agent gets the bed," he responded immediately.

She laughed out loud then and the tightness in his chest eased a tiny bit. "I was going to say on condition you stop blaming yourself. I've finally accepted that it wasn't my fault, I don't have the energy to deal with having to keep telling you it wasn't yours." She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. "I mean it. I know you want to blame someone and it's why I didn't tell you back then… I thought… no, I knew you'd blame me. Yes, you would have" she rushed on stopping him in his tracks. "You know you would have – we weren't friends then like we are now. You were angry I'd been arrested, you were angry I'd ruined your weekend with that girl and how could I have told you then?" She spread her hands helplessly "I just wanted to go home and I couldn't and then all that stuff happened with Harry and you were so upset about him too, so I just squashed it down, you know?" She looked up at him, eyes shiny with tears. "I thought I was just being a good agent. Put on an agent face and pretend everything's fine."

"Oh God, Amanda," Lee groaned in disbelief. "Did I make you think that-"

"Lee! Stop it!" she said, her voice rising with frustration. "You didn't make me do anything. I'm a grown woman – I made the choice not to tell anyone and it was a bad choice but it was my choice!" She stopped to haul in a deep gulp of air. "Just like it was my choice to go up to that hotel room in the first place."

"She'd gotten you drunk!" he growled. "She took that choice away from you."

"Yes she did," answered Amanda quietly. "But we've had too much to drink plenty of times at parties and you've never done that."

"I wouldn't!" he said, horrified.

Amanda grabbed his hand and held it between hers. "Of course you wouldn't! But don't you see? That's the point – you would never make that choice, you aren't… what she is. It wasn't my fault and it wasn't yours. It was all hers." She met his eyes and nodded. "Right?"

Lee stared at her silently before finally nodding. "Right," he said gruffly.

"Good," she answered obviously relieved.

There was a long pause while they stared at each other before Amanda finally broke it. "Okay, I have a second condition."

"Anything," he said quickly.

"Can I have a sandwich or something? My stomach is killing me and dinner was delicious, but I just can't face eating any of the leftovers right now."

Lee couldn't help laughing for a moment at the unexpected request. "Yes, you can have a sandwich. What do you want?"

"Peanut butter," she answered instantly. "Comfort food."

"Comfort food," he nodded. "Got it."

Amanda watched as he got up and walked to the kitchen, recognizing the tension that was still in every inch of his frame. She heard him moving quietly around for a moment or two, then a sound that didn't quite make sense. Slipping off the couch, she went to stand in the entrance to his small kitchen; the sandwich was finished and sitting on a plate nearby but Lee was standing with his back to her, pouring out the bottle of schnapps in the sink. He dropped the empty bottle into the garbage with a muttered curse and leaned forward on the counter, head dropped against his chest, hand rubbing the back of his neck. She padded forward, wrapping her arms around his waist, her cheek against his back.

"It's okay," she said. "It's okay."

Lee turned and put his arms around her, resting his head on hers. "No it's not," he sighed. "But it will be."