Author's Notes, 7/22: Sorry this took so long…I kept getting stuck on transition paragraphs and abandoning work for weeks at a time. Anyway, this is meant to follow the preceding chapter, but can also be read as a standalone. Though set post-Man Down, the bulk of it was written prior to the airing of said episode, and as such the timeline of memory loss may not entirely line up with canon.

Limbo

Hands and voices are all Eric remembers of the time just after surgery. Not words, and no specific memories, but familiar touch and tone begin to trickle in days after the first time he wakes up with a blank where yesterday should have been. The sensory information blends with imagination, until he thinks he can form a picture of those hours he was out. Horatio's words would have been the same, "Hang in there. Don't give up," and Alexx with her soft murmurs, mothering until his own arrived. Ryan, nervous and agitated, no touch there, and always accompanied by Calleigh. Calleigh he can visualize all too well, voice cool and fractured and he knows later Speedle was heavy on their minds.

The thing is, Speed wasn't on his.

It's his second realization of a day that's barely begun, and why he can't look Horatio in the eye when the lieutenant comes in later, expression saying what his words never will. Horatio is here seeking redemption, not from Eric himself but from the sight of him. He needs proof of life, something tangible, to feed his conscience. To tell himself he didn't lose another. Eric doesn't interrupt. Lets the companionable silence soothe Horatio and scream accusations at him.

"Speedle lost his life, you lost your badge. So, you even now?" No, he wants to tell Stetler's echo, and they never were.

He's told he's been shot, but instead of flashing back to his friend, all he can think about is where Marisol's gone to now. At times he can hear her murmuring, her fingers grazing his with the whisper of a prayer, but the lure of sleepalways pulls him back to its depths before he can let her know he's awake. He keeps missing her; every time he opens his eyes someone else is in her place.

The pieces don't line up when they tell him she's dead. The cancer won, then, and meanwhile he had failed to uphold his promise that he would always be there for her; the realization leaves him slumped and bitter for the rest of the day. It takes him longer still to understand the gap in time, and when he does, the alternative isn't any better.

Once more the thought of his friend taps around the edges. He can see it in the corners of Calleigh's eyes; the parallels are too obvious to ignore. But he doesn't care what medicine and logic have to say, he still thinks a bullet to the head ought to do as much damage as one to the heart. Either they should have saved Speed, or they shouldn't have saved him.

It's hard to say which one he believes more

There's less sleep than simple loss of consciousness these days, and he doesn't really dream, although images filter through. Flashes and noise, vague shapes of ideas. He wakes up one morning with not quite a memory, but a recollection that the setup seemed amusing at the time, as Horatio dragged him out of sight. He had been mostly still conscious and biting down on his tongue both against the pain and to keep from laughing hysterically, because it was Brazil all over again but he wasn't supposed to be the one bleeding.

You both took bullets for Horatio, are you even now? Are you the favorite?

No, no, no…he beats the voice back to the furthest corners of his mind, knowing full well that it will return. For months, years, every crackle over the radio of "officer down" brought his mind back to the same place, an involuntary stiffening of the shoulders, bracing himself to hear that Calleigh was lying pale and still with blood seeping over her vest, or that Horatio wouldn't be walking through the door.

He can't imagine being present at such an incident even once, let alone twice. With an uncomfortable swallow, Eric realizes that Horatio has done exactly that, twice watched his team shrink by a quarter before his eyes. Morbid curiosity rising, he wonders who the other man thought of first after the second bullet struck, his friend or his bride or his brother, and decides he doesn't want to know. There is no satisfactory answer.

Last year's wound on his arm still bears the faintest bit of a discolored scar, 2006 as good as tattooed on him, but already more healed than his parents. They'll be crippled long after his hair grows back to cover the mark of 2007, just like the bullet fragments will stay lodged beneath, constant reminders, you survived what your sister didn't.

It bothers him that he can't remember the bullet that left the first mark. He's read the police reports, read his own statements, but he still can't even see it in the third person perspective, much less the first. The paradox of the falling tree: if he doesn't remember, did it really happen?

Unable to accept her end, Eric confronts the cemetery. It's supposed to bring him closure, but the first thing he sees upon arrival is an open grave. It yawns, gaping and morbid, two rows from Marisol's so he can't possibly avoid seeing it, waiting for him to take his place in the ground where he belongs. His thoughts are half hysteric, it's not his grave; it's not. The flowers never reach her headstone and he's spinning to get out of there, fallen tulip heads melting into mud.

Time jumps erratically forward and he's standing in front of an etching for Tim Speedle, not quite sure how he made it here, with nothing but the apologies he had this time a year ago, and the year before that.

They never talk about him anymore. They used to, that first year of adjustment, even if it was more often than not followed by a biting of the tongue, a guilty look and a quick change in topic. Old habits die hard - but they are not immortal. Utterances of "Speed would…" gradually went from few and far between to non-existent as their daily vocabulary smoothly shrank by two words. And Eric began to understand that time was a corrosive element as much as a healer.

He has nothing left in his hands to mark this visit, but perhaps a fingerprint will suffice. Speed would appreciate the humor.

Weeks later, even while arguing about his readiness to return to work, his memory remains patchy. There's a very real possibility, one he refuses to fully acknowledge, that it will never be restored, which doesn't bode well for his future at all. Where he'll be then is anyone's guess. In the meantime, he isn't dead, but as long as he's like this he hasn't really come back to life, either. Flip a coin and he's standing on the edge, neither here nor there. Life is the better option, he thinks, but the dead at least have peace.

Eric is still in limbo.