Sam wakes up slowly, rolling onto his back and squeezing his eyes shut against the daylight. He smiles slightly to himself, still not sufficiently used to this feeling to not take pleasure in it.

Today marks the first full week of not being woken up by nightmares.

It has been a gradual thing, beginning with him waking up before anyone actually died in the scenario that had replayed itself over and over again in his dreams for so long that he had forgotten what sleeping without nightmares feels like. Then he was waking himself up before any shots were fired, as if his subconscious had simply decided it didn't want these images anymore, until finally he slept through the night, waking up one morning to sunlight streaming through his windows, feeling confused but refreshed.

And now that has happened seven times and he is no longer confused. Sleeping through the night is slowly becoming normal for him.

He just knows Dr. Dwyer will contribute it to what she is surely calling his 'breakthrough' of a few weeks ago, but Sam doesn't even care. All that matters is that he is finally getting a decent night's sleep. If pressed, however, he will insist that he just got bored with watching the same dream replay over and over and so he stopped. By himself.

Just like he's doing everything else by himself.

He goes to the kitchen to make coffee and turns on the radio just in time for the news. The second story is about a bank robbery on Queen Street yesterday and he finds himself wondering who is working the case, what the details are, if there are any suspects yet.

It's making him jittery and for the first time in much too long he wants to be back at work, to be doing something.

Clearly sleep was what he needed. Sleep and some distance. He can focus again now, and it feels great.

In the early afternoon he hears his phone ringing in his bedroom and only then does he realize that he left it on the bedside table last night instead of hiding it from himself as he has been doing for over a month now.

By the time he gets there the ringing has stopped and he gets a text from Sarah, saying she didn't call about anything important and she'd try again later.

He calls her back and she sounds so surprised to hear from him that he can't help but feel guilty about how he's been avoiding her calls. Everyone's calls, really.

They chat for almost ten minutes and a couple of times he catches himself laughing at the stories she's telling him. Silly stories that aren't really about anything, their only purpose is to entertain him. For the first time since he was shot, it's working.

Finally she tells him regretfully that she has to get back to work, her break is over and he knows how her manager gets if she's late.

So he tells her she should just quit if her job is making her unhappy, do something else.

She starts saying something about the recession and the job market but then she stops herself and asks, "So is that what you've done? You found another job because this one made you unhappy?"

He clears his throat and opens his mouth to tell her yes it is, but the words won't come. "Maybe," he says instead. "I'm keeping my options open."

She laughs lightly. "Always playing the field, huh, Sammy?"

He chuckles. "I think you said something about your break being over?" he retorts.

They hang up and he smiles to himself, knowing that Sarah feels better now than she did before they talked. She's been too worried about him and he hasn't been able to convince her to stop until now. But this time it finally sounded like she believed he was okay.

Maybe that's because he finally is.

So it should be easy now, just telling her that he's transferring, but he didn't. The thing is, he doesn't really want to go, he doesn't want to leave his friends at 15 and the only reason the thought ever occurred to him in any serious way was Andy.

Andy, who no longer haunts his dreams, who no longer occupies every other conscious thought he has.

Andy, who is still the first one to spring to mind when he lists his regrets.

But regretting the past is not the same thing as running from it, so why isn't he able to leave yet?

He is driving to the station and it's only when he catches himself drumming his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the song playing on the radio that it occurs to him that he is in a good mood. When he parks outside the barn and exits his car he smiles at two officers walking to their squad car and they smile back, nodding in greeting.

Once inside he goes to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee before his appointment with Dr. Dwyer. Being back in the barn is easier now. It helps that his appointments are always scheduled during a different shift so he doesn't have to see any of the people he worked with regularly. He has only just mentally thanked Frank for this small favor when he turns around to see Andy standing in the doorway, frozen.

"McNally," he says, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. This is the first time he has seen her, in real life, in almost two months and he doesn't really appreciate what it's doing to his pulse. This is not the heartbeat of a man who is ready to move on.

She smiles in greeting, the expression not reaching her eyes.

"Back in uniform," he says, indicating her outfit with a wave of his hand.

"Yes." She comes to stand next to him, getting a mug and preparing to boil water for tea. "First week back."

"Different shift, though."

She shrugs, carefully reading the label for each type of tea in the jar of teabags before settling on Earl Grey and dropping it into her mug. "Just overtime."

He feels like he's interviewing a witness who very determinedly does not want to talk. Unfortunately Andy isn't handcuffed and forced to sit across from him in an interview room. That would probably make getting her to look at him a lot easier; although, considering how stubborn she can be sometimes, it might not make a difference at all. He can be stubborn too, though, and he is determined to prove to himself that they can have a normal conversation.

"So how've you been, McNally?"

She turns her head to look at him, her face turned up in a disbelieving grimace. As if she doesn't think he has a right to know, or maybe she just doesn't understand why he would care. "Fine."

He raises his eyebrows expectantly.

Her eyes narrow and she glares at him, but he can see the corners of her lips twitching upward. "And how are you?" she asks petulantly.

"I'm fine, thank you for asking," he says, walking to the fridge and getting the cream for her.

She takes it, staring at it as if it's part of an alien spaceship.

"It goes in your tea, McNally," he explains jokingly. Clearly the cream is somehow significant to her although he doesn't really see how or why.

"Yeah. Right," she agrees, nodding and turning away from him to pour some into her mug. When she turns back around he holds out a hand to take the cream from her and put it back in the fridge, but she won't give it to him. "Are you really okay, Sam?"

He points at the cream, silently asking if she's done with it, and she hands it to him. "Yes. Doctors are very impressed with my recovery," he says, putting the cream back where he took it and turning around to face her again.

"I didn't mean that," she says in a low voice.

He looks at her questioningly.

"Oliver says you're..." She pauses, clearly worried he'll be upset that she and Oliver have talked about him.

"Oliver says what?" he asks, careful to keep his voice neutral.

She shrugs. "He says you don't talk to anyone."

"We're talking right now," he points out.

She rolls her eyes at him. "But we haven't been. It's been over a month, Sam, and you've just completely shut me out."

On any other day Sam might've pointed out the fact that she didn't exactly make it hard for him to do that, all it took was ignoring a couple of phone calls after she came to see him that night. She is right, after all, he has been shutting her out, and it wouldn't have mattered how hard she had tried, he would've kept doing that, because he genuinely didn't want to be around her. He couldn't be around her.

But standing here with her in this kitchen he's beginning to wonder if maybe Dr. Dwyer is right, peaceful coexistence is an option. Up until everything blew up in his hands, it had been going pretty well. Maybe it was just the reality of having Andy moving on thrown in his face like that that made him want to get as far away as he could. Maybe he can get used to seeing the two of them together.

Maybe he will be okay being around her again. He can't seem to get used to the idea of walking away, after all.

"You said you didn't do it for me," he tells her, changing the subject. Bringing it back to the moment that, in his mind, spells the breaking point, because he knows she feels betrayed by the fact that he would ever ask her to do that, and it broke his heart all over again when she told him it wasn't about him. Even more so when he found out she felt comfortable talking to Collins about it.

"What was I supposed to say? You asked me to break the rules in a pretty serious way, Sam-to protect your girlfriend. Should I have said that I did it because I still love you?"

When she says the word 'love' his eyes flash to her and then fix themselves on the notice pinned to the board above the coffee machine, reminding everyone about the charity basketball game against 27 in two weeks. "Is that why you did it?" he asks slowly, hesitantly.

"No," she says and he can feel something crumbling inside himself. "I did it because we were partners once, and you have your partner's back. Always."

He can't help but smile slightly as she repeats his own lesson back to him. Part of him is proud of the kind of cop she's turned into, even if it isn't necessarily the kind of cop she wants to be.

"Even if you think what they're asking you to do is wrong," she ads emphatically.

"I know it was," he agrees. "And I'm sorry I had to ask you, but there really was no other way."

"There's always another way," she argues. "The truth is another way."

He laughs a brief humorless laugh that makes her look directly at him, challenging him to say what he's thinking. He stares back at her, not saying a word.

"You disappeared," she says finally, when she accepts that he won't tell her why he thinks telling the truth is amusing.

"I did," he agrees. He didn't actually go anywhere, but he supposes it must have looked like he disappeared from where she's standing.

"Are you back?" He wants to think that she sounds hopeful, but he honestly can't tell.

"I don't know," he says. Truthfully. He really still doesn't know.

She frowns. "So then what are you doing here?"

He shakes his head, sucking in his lips and raising his eyebrows. "I have no idea," he admits.

For some reason that makes her smile slightly and he smiles back, because what else can he do?

"Maybe I missed you?" he asks, his tone joking, his eyes serious.

"Right," she says sarcastically, not looking at him.

"What, because no one could ever miss you?" He's kidding, but also on some level worried that she actually feels that way – and that he is part of that.

"Oh, I am very missable," she informs him, suddenly smiling a teasing smile that reminds him of years ago when things were complicated, too, but still somehow so much easier.

He pulls a disbelieving face and she laughs.

"I'm actually here to see Dr. Dwyer," he tells her when her laughter is reduced to a grin.

"Really?" She is unable to conceal her surprise at that and he nods. "Wow."

"What?"

"Nothing," she says, shaking her head quickly. "Just, that's very-healthy of you."

"On the other hand, I am drinking about ten cups of coffee a day," he admits, picking up the mug he left on the counter to illustrate his point and catching a glimpse of his watch. "I need to, uh..." He points down the hall and gulps down the rest of the coffee in two large mouthfuls.

"Yeah, of course. Me too. I mean, not, I'm-I should get back to work," she rambles, spilling tea on the counter as she picks up the mug too quickly.

"See you around, McNally," he tells her, smiling as he walks away.

The smile lasts all the way down the hall and up the stairs and is answered by Dr. Dwyer when he enters her office moments later.

"You're in a good mood," she informs him, not commenting on the fact that he is also several minutes late.

"Yes, I am," he agrees.

"Dare I ask why?"

"I got my handicap down to 13 this weekend," he jokes.

"Impressive. Congratulation," she says, playing along. "Want to sit?"

He shakes his head. He's feeling too fidgety for the couch today.

"So your golfing is improving?" she asks, her voice professional, and it's clear that she's inviting him to use it as a metaphor for whatever is really going on. Breakthrough or no breakthrough, this isn't Dr. Phil.

"Yeah," he says, walking to the window and staring out at the parking lot for a moment before turning to look at her, leaning against the window sill. "I've been practicing my game at home, and I think it's really paying off on the course."

Her eyes widen marginally and he realizes what she thinks he means and a burst of laughter escapes him. "Not like that," he assures her.

She holds up a dismissive hand. "That's fine," she insists.

"I know it is, but it's not what I meant."

"So what did you mean?"

He walks to the couch, drumming his fingers on its back. "I've just had a lot of time to think about things," he says, not sure how to really explain. A handicap of 13 is very good, but it's still a handicap. "And today I managed to have an entire conversation without it turning into something-destructive," he finishes, taking a while to come up with the right word.

She nods. "That's very good," she tells him, sounding like a teacher praising a student's homework. She hesitates, taking a deep breath and smiling slightly. "And how does that make you feel?"

He shakes his head, grinning, and her smile widens in response when she sees that he doesn't take offense to her 'psycho babble.' "Good."

She nods again, clearly impressed. "Do you want to talk about what you can do to make sure you have more conversations like that one?"

"Not really," he replies.

"Is that because you already know?" She asks.

He shakes his head. "I think maybe the planets just aligned. I'm sure it happens every couple of centuries."

"So you're going to wait a couple of centuries before you have another conversation?"

He frowns, contemplating her words. Waiting a couple of months was hard enough, and that was when he didn't really want to talk to McNally. He can't even imagine having to wait several years, much less centuries, life expectancy not being an issue. "No."

Dr. Dwyer nods. "So then what?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know. I guess I'll figure it out."

TBC