Jean opened her eyes and was met with a dark room just light enough to know that it was morning but the sun wasn't up yet. Then she heard some noises in the room and looked around to see what they were, and they realized it was the TV set across from the bed. Right away she knew that this wasn't her room, she tried turning over to see where they were and the first thing she saw was Murdock on his side of the bed dressed in a white undershirt and the dress pants he'd had on the night before, and he had his head propped to the side on one balled up hand as he watched the cartoons showing on TV.

She tried to think back to last night, and in bits and pieces it started to come back to her, but not much. Then it hit her that the reason for that was because their date had been cut short. Her hand started to curl, first she dug her nails into the bed sheet under her, then they curled up into a fist. Her whole body felt weird, foreign, it felt like the circulation had been cut off and recently restored in her hands, if only she could lift her hand high enough to bash herself in the head. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Murdock had figured that Jean would be waking up soon. When he woke up he'd found her sleeping with her arms behind her back, and he could guess they'd both gone to sleep sometime during the night and she just wasn't aware of it yet. So he'd pulled them out from under her and rubbed them a bit to get the blood flowing again; that she had slept through that said plenty about how out of it she was, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't last for long. And apparently it hadn't. He'd done a pretty good job of contenting himself with the early morning reruns of 'Dingbat and the Creeps', and of the new cartoon 'Ghostbusters', and in his opinion the cartoon was better than the live action show done in the 70s. No doubt Tracy the Gorilla was easier to tame when he was just ink and paper.

However, his attention was quickly drawn from that, to the sounds coming from the other side of the bed. Jean was on her side facing away from him, it looked like she was hitting her hands against the mattress beneath her and it sounded like she was half grumbling something to herself.

"Jean, what's the matter?" he asked as he crawled over to her side of the bed.

She wouldn't look at him so he hiked one leg up and pinned her down with it and moved to see her face, and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach when he realized Jean hadn't been talking to herself, she was crying. He tried getting her to look at him but she wouldn't and even tried to move away from him, so he threw himself down on her and pinned her to the bed so she couldn't get away and once again he found himself rolling on the bed wrestling with her, but this time it was very different, this time there wasn't anything enjoyable about it. He finally managed to roll them both over to the middle of the bed and managed to get Jean so she was facing him, and he grabbed her tight so she couldn't get away from him again.

"What's the matter, hon?" he asked as he reached up with one hand and stroked over her forehead up to the top of her head, trying to get her to calm down.

"I'm sorry, Murdock," was all she was willing to say.

And it left him thoroughly confused. "What've you done to be sorry about?"

Jean couldn't believe it, did he really not know?

"I'm sorry I ruined your plans for our date last night," she said, "I know it meant a lot to you…"

"Hey now wait a minute," Murdock decided he already didn't want to hear any more and he put his hand over her mouth but instead of clamping her mouth shut the end result was more akin to strumming her lips with the flat of his hand. When that seemed to quiet her down he pushed her onto her back and pressed his knees into the mattress on either side of her as he hovered over her and said again, "Now wait just a minute, Jean…" he took his hand away and she started to open her mouth again but he cut her off unexpectedly, telling her a bit forcefully, "Be quiet!", and tried to figure out how to make heads or tails of this one.

Meanwhile, Jean was trying to figure out how she was going to explain herself for last night, she knew she couldn't possibly tell Murdock the truth. But as it turned out, she lucked out and didn't have to.

"While it's true last night did not go as planned," Murdock told her, "I don't regret any of it."

Jean didn't say anything but he could see her slightly shaking her head from side to side.

"Look at me," he told her.

She did.

"It's always something, isn't it?" she asked, that familiar 'burnt out' tone returning to her voice, "Every single time we go out, something has to happen to ruin it. Last night nothing happened, there was no Decker, no cops, no rain, and leave it to me to blow it."

Murdock tried to brighten up the situation and replied, "All that means is we'll have to try it again, saves me the trouble of coming up with half of the ideas for the next night." It didn't get a response out of her so he patted her arm repeatedly and said, "Hey," to get her attention. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek and said, "Jean, you can't be upset over that."

"Well I am," she replied, and shook her head, "We get one night to ourselves and I ruin it."

Murdock just shrugged, made a small 'eh' sound and quoted, "The best laid plans of mice and men."

"What the hell does that even mean?" Jean asked him.

"I don't know," he answered as he fell down on the bed alongside her, "Have to admit it is catchy though." He stroked over her hair and told her, "Jean, I'm not upset with you."

"And why not?" she asked.

"Because you couldn't help what happened last night, it just happened," he replied, "I know you weren't trying to sabotage our date."

"May as well have," Jean grumbled as she rolled away from him, "You sure made the damnedest choice when you picked your girlfriend."

She didn't even feel a shift in the mattress, out of nowhere she felt two thin but strong arms wrap around her waist and pull her back, and she felt Murdock's chest pressing into her back and his breath on her neck as he told her, "Jean, I love you."

"Yeah," she sneered, "And why would you be stupid enough to do that?"

"Because I know that you love me too," he replied, as though that were the most common fact in the world.

"Funny," she noted, "We could fool most people."

Sometimes there just weren't words to convince someone. Murdock patted her on the head comfortingly and just held her tight and let her feel his presence, let her know that he wasn't going anywhere.

Jean was a hard person to read, which was fine with Murdock because his line of work had given him a lot of experience with people like that over the years; and by now he considered himself pretty good at it. He knew Jean well enough to know that to say she was an emotionally detached person, was incorrect, it was more a matter of when possible she kept herself in check, a defense mechanism; you don't let people know by the expressions on your face what's going through your mind, and usually you lived longer that way. That of course all depended on what kind of people were you dealing with on a daily basis. Hers though, was and had been for a few years, a dangerous daily life. This he understood very well, especially given her association with them, you could never tell who you encountered at any random moment might actually be the enemy looking for any weakness identifiable. It was a hard mask to remove just because you were in company of only people you knew and could trust; and more times than not it forced the others to be very understanding of what was going on to keep a good relationship going between them. He was sure that it wasn't anything that people with military and law enforcement careers didn't go through with their own families when they came home at the end of the day, clocked out from work, but you couldn't punch a clock for your mind and where it was, you took that work home with you whether you realized it or not.

That was one side of it, another one was that Jean was for the most part and all intents and purposes, a very private person. It was no trouble at all to get her talking at any time about nearly any subject, at times it was harder to get her to shut up. But Murdock also knew that there was at least one subject that Jean was not so willing to volunteer any information from: not so much 'that favorite subject – myself'. Bits and pieces of her own background, her own life before meeting them were offered up from time to time, but that had all been in time.

Experimentally, he ran a finger up and down her spine slowly, to see what if any reaction it would get, so far there wasn't any. Also for all intents and purposes, Jean seemed to have tuned herself out from everything around her.

Murdock never doubted that Jean loved him, just as he knew she didn't doubt herself that she loved him, but he knew that she did doubt any ability she possessed to actually show it, it was a subject that had been brought up from time to time. And that indeed was the hard part; if you only looked at the surface of things, if you never bothered digging beneath the face value of things. He knew it was a hard subject for her to talk about, and he knew many times it was just as hard to hear as it would be to actually say. If he'd been less in tune with the ins and outs of their relationship, if he'd been any one of a hundred denser men that needed it explained to them, he knew that she wouldn't be able to do it, because she'd never be able to bring herself to say any of those words.

So she wasn't always good to actually say she loved him. So on several occasions she liked to act like she couldn't stand having him around, and plenty of times she acted like she wasn't interested when he tried to kiss her or tried to get close to her at all. He knew better than that, though. Actions spoke louder than words, that's what everybody said anyway, so there should be some truth to it, and as far as he was concerned, there was, and plenty of it. And it didn't matter much what she did or didn't say to him, the things she'd done spoke volumes to him just how deep in this they were.

The biggest piece of evidence to support this, as far as he was concerned, went back practically to when they first met. The hardest thing a person with trust issues can do is trust, and she had trusted him almost from the beginning; she who for six months had had nobody to trust and even if she had, wouldn't have given them the time of day to find any information that could be used against her later on, had trusted him when he was practically a stranger. Though in time they'd all come to be her friends, there were only two people on the Team she would ever and had ever before, willingly purged her soul to; Hannibal obviously since he had that fatherly effect on all of them that they could always come to him with their problems, but long before that had happened, he'd been the first, the first and for a while the only person she trusted enough to get close to at all. That in itself, that which might appear so microscopic, so minute, to anyone else who didn't get it and might seem irrelevant, said more to him than anything she could ever have told him would've. And even now, he was still the first person and often times the only person she would come to about any matter she wouldn't give another person the time of day about.

It was easier for someone like him to be open and openly affectionate, he was an uninhibited person, always had been; never had any trouble saying exactly what was on his mind even in his sappier moments, would think nothing of getting right on top of someone and hugging or kissing them in public, no matter who stared or thought he was nuts, even when it was his own men thinking that. If Jean ever had been that way, or even a slightly more refined version of it, he didn't know, but it was obvious she sure wasn't now; and for some reason he found himself flashing on his original question to her of what the hell her parents had done to her. Though he was sure, whatever caused this, if something actually did and it wasn't inborn in her, wasn't her folks' doing.

He reached around her and curled her hand in his to see how or if she responded to the touch, this time she did, he could feel her grip squeezing his in return.

"Jean, it was just one date, it's not important," Murdock told her.

He felt something bump against his chest as Jean let out a singular, humorless laugh as she replied, "Was to you."

He laid his head against her shoulder and remarked, "Not really." That got her attention, she lifted her head and turned to look back towards him and he explained, "Sure it's nice having a night away from everything and everybody, get to switch things up a bit, but for the most part? I like it better when we stay home for the night and it's just the two of us, no Faceman, no Big Guy, no Hannibal sticking his nose into everything, no annoying phone calls, no Decker come busting in, just you and me and a great big house all to ourselves. Like all those rainy nights over the winter when we heated up a couple cans of spaghetti and had a late dinner watching an old murder mystery on TV and wondered every time the room lit up if the power was gonna go out. And remember the times when it did, and the house got cold so we got wrapped up in one of those heavy blankets and made like a couple of Alaskans?" To emphasize at the last part, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him again and just grinned as she let out a startled yelp and laugh.

"Or," he added, "How bout the times when it really got cold when the heater went out, so we piled the heavy covers on the bed and burrowed under them like a couple of spooked kids during a thunderstorm?"

Jean laughed and remarked, "Yes, I remember fondly having a warm spot to press my cold feet into, too bad you jumped."

"Well," he replied sheepishly, "If you would've cut your toenails…"

Jean continued to laugh and latched a hand onto one of the arms around her and said, "Okay, you made your point."

"Good," Murdock kissed her and let go of her, "Maybe now you'll want the stuff you got last night."

"Hm?" Jean asked him, and followed his finger in the direction he was pointing and saw the flowers, box of chocolates, candy cigarettes, chewing gum, teddy bear and bottles of liquor, perfume and bubble bath and asked, "We get married again and I didn't know it?"

Murdock just chuckled and told her, "Come on."

"Lot of stuff for something that didn't mean that much to you," Jean told Murdock during the drive back to her house.

Murdock just shrugged and explained, "Getting it didn't mean much, being able to surprise you, that was the main thing."

"Yeah well, I'm surprised," Jean said a little unenthusiastically as she picked up a large bottle of perfume and got a whiff of it. Not her brand of choice, but not a bad second either; it still smelt a hell of a lot better than that cologne Face always wore.

"Do you think the others are going to be at the house waiting for us?" she asked him.

Murdock shook his head, "No, I made sure we had the place to ourselves last night."

"Another best laid plan for the rats," Jean commented.

"Oh well," Murdock replied.

They finally reached her house and made a few trips carting everything in from the car, and all of it was promptly dumped on the dining room table to be sorted through later. Murdock went to pick up the phone to call Hannibal and see what was up for the day, and he started laughing.

"What is it?" Jean asked.

Murdock held up the little gray phone wire that had been pulled out of the phone the previous night, "Hannibal, always thinking ahead." He stuck it back in the hole and when he got a dial tone, he dialed the number of their house.

"Morning, Colonel," he said into the receiver, "What's happening? Ah…well no, we're just getting in…" he rolled his eyes and said, "It's a long story…uh huh…uh huh…" he pulled the receiver away from his ear, and then held it close again, as if he was trying to hear something in the background, and half quietly he said into the phone, "Eh Colonel, would you mind giving Faceman a little elbow for me?" he asked as he gestured such himself. "Uh huh…" he turned to Jean and said, "I don't know, maybe half an hour…alright, we'll be there, bye-bye."

"What was that all about?" Jean asked.

"Once we have a chance to eat and get changed, Hannibal wants us to come over," Murdock explained.

"What for this time?" she asked.

"We're going to take a gamble that this job is legit and not just one of Decker's traps," Hannibal said.

"How come?" Jean asked.

"Simply because," Hannibal answered, "He's not smart enough to come up with something this elaborate. Now, if we're going to be keeping an eye on Miss Faith, it'll be a good idea to have a cover house where we can all lay low for a while."

"Because of one psycho ex?" Jean asked him.

"She's a very public figure coming to the city for a concert," Hannibal explained, "Her ex could just be the tip of the iceberg, and why would we want to take any chances?"

"Good point," Murdock said.

"And we're not going to wait until she gets to town to find a place to stay," Hannibal said, "Because on the off chance that she would be trying to set us up, we need to know the entire layout, every single in and out of the house, we need to know every square inch, we need to know who the neighbors are, everything."

"Heh," Jean snickered, "There goes the neighborhood."

"Face has managed to come up with a few possibilities that are currently open to rent," Hannibal said.

"So while you guys are running background checks on this Stevi Faith and her manager, he and Murdock are going to head over and decide which place will be most likely?" Jean asked.

"No," Hannibal answered, "You are."

"What?" she asked.

"Hannibal!" Face whined, "Why do I have to take her with me?"

Hannibal very calmly went over to Face and put his hand on the Lieutenant's shoulder and asked him, "Face, do you remember that time the policeman came to our motel room and Murdock dressed up as your wife?"

"Yeah," Face nodded, a look of dread automatically on his face.

"Would you like to try that again?" he asked.

He swallowed hard and answered, "No."

"Well then you need someone to go with you who can pose as your wife," Hannibal told him, "It'll draw less suspicion that way and it'll work if you tell the realtor that you need a house with plenty of room for when her family comes to visit."

Face looked like he would've rather sat naked with a king cobra than do that, but he knew he didn't have a choice.

"Jean," Hannibal turned to her, "Try not to kill him."

"You know how to take the fun out of everything," she sarcastically remarked.

Jean slammed the door to Face's 'Vette shut and said, "Let's see if we can't get done with this one soon and hopefully it'll be the last one we have to look at, I want to get lunch."

"You and your stomach," Face remarked as they headed up the sidewalk, keeping a considerable distance from each other.

"Not my fault," Jean said.

"Oh no," he shook his head, "You're all skin and bones…with about three layers of fat on top."

Jean spun on her heel and glared at him, saying, "Better than being one of those twig seat cushions you're always running around with. I'd sure hate to have to count on any of them for any assistance in an emergency."

Face just shook his head and grumbled something to himself. He watched Jean walk up the porch steps and asked, "And why did you have to come along dressed like that?", indicating the worn out denim work clothes she'd come along in.

"There's going to be five people staying in the house, we need a house with five accessible bedrooms," Jean said, "I figured the realtor would be more inclined to help us find just that once they heard I need one for my studio."

Face shook his head, "That's not what you wear when you work in a studio, that's what you wear when you work in a garage."

"Did I say what kind of studio?" Jean replied, "I don't know what you're in a bad mood for anyway, it's your fault we're still here."

"My fault?" Face asked.

"Yes," Jean said as she snatched the key from him that the realtor had given them and took it over to the door, "We've been in 10 neighborhoods, looked through 16 houses all of which come already furnished, the last 5 of which all had five bedrooms, but you just had to blow it by insisting there had to be another bathroom."

"Well excuse me," Face said as he walked up behind her, "But if I'm going to be on my best appearance that is essential to my scams working as flawlessly as they do, I cannot be cramming my way in between four other people to the bathroom sink."

"You are the only high maintenance man I've ever seen, and you're worse than the 10 highest maintenance women in the world," Jean said as she got the door open and they headed in.

"Not that you'd know any of them personally of course," Face remarked.

"Sure I would," Jean said, "All I'd have to do is flip through your little black book and file under the 'plastic' section."

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" Face asked as he kicked the door shut behind him.

"Thank you," she said.

"Come on," he told her, "There's a basement in this house, we need to check it out."

They went to the back of the house and looked over the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, the back pantry, and found the door leading to the basement. They headed down the stairs and found the basement that looked like a shelter room. The place had been furnished with a small cot bed, a few folding chairs, and there were rows of large boxes pushed up against one wall.

"What the hell is this?" Jean asked.

"Well I'm sure you're aware that California is subject to tornadoes just like the rest of the country, including Rot Gut, New York," Face remarked condescendingly.

"Why the hell would anybody off and leave all this stuff behind?" she asked.

"They're a necessity in any house," Face said, "Supplies for tornadoes, power outages, earthquakes, floods, you name it."

"And in times of crisis, it all becomes more valuable than cash, so you'd have to be an idiot to leave it all behind for the likes of us to rent," Jean noted.

"Boy, if you couldn't find anything to complain about you'd just be lost, wouldn't you?" Face asked her.

She looked to him and said, "I'm inclined to say the same thing about you, except you don't stop at just complaining, you also whine."

"Whine?!" he repeated in disbelief, proving her point.

"Yes you do, whine like a little brat that needs his butt whooped," Jean said, then turned and went to check out the rest of the room.

"You know it still blows my mind what Murdock ever saw in you," Face told her.

Jean turned on her heel and answered point blank, "Because he's not interested in a quick fix fling like you are, he's looking for a steady, reliable relationship, something that you clearly wouldn't know anything about."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"Oh come off it, Face," Jean told him, "All the women you take out are interchangeable, none of them have anything to offer that another one doesn't, there's nothing to differentiate between any of them and there's a reason for that. Every single time you take one of those perky bubble headed blondes out, it's to a fancy dinner with expensive wine and afterwards to some place dimly lit with slow soft music and always back to your place and we all know why. And they're always the same, low cut knockout dress, high heels, long flowing blonde hair, a perfect tan, long painted nails, long gaudy black eyelashes, bright red lips, decked out like a peacock in shiny jewelry, you don't have any idea what any of your dates look like when they take their faces off. You'd never take out a homey woman in blue jeans with dirt under her nails and her hair undone, you'd never just take a date out for hot dogs and a couple of beers and a kiss goodnight, it's not who you are and everybody knows it, even yourself who won't admit it and like to think that you're the same to all women, well you're not; only to the thinnest, blondest, perkiest, dumbest ones who are satisfied with a little smooth talk and a lot of expensive champagne. If you ever tried having a real relationship with a real woman you'd fall flat on your face and you know it."

Face was so dumbstruck by her outburst that he didn't even know how to respond, so for the moment he chose not to. A moot point because a few seconds later, the ground beneath them was shaking and so was everything else in the room.

"What the hell was that?" Jean asked when the excitement had died down and they got up from the floor.

"Oh really Jean, you've been in Los Angeles for over a year and you don't know what an earthquake is?" Face asked.

"I've never been in one that was strong enough to actually feel," she explained, "Earthquakes are like strokes, so many of them occur that are too weak to actually notice."

Face got up and dusted himself off and looked around the room to see if they'd come close to having anything big and pointy falling on their heads. They lucked out. Everything got rattled but nothing actually fell over. He went up the stairs and found that the door was closed, he tried turning the knob but the door wouldn't budge.

"Oh great," he grumbled.

"What is it?" Jean called up the stairs.

"The door's stuck," he huffed and puffed after trying it a couple more times, "The wood must be warped."

"Oh great," Jean parroted, "Now how are we going to get out of here?"

Face came back down the stairs and said, "Maybe there's a window down here."

Jean shook her head and said, "You just had to tell the realtor 'go to lunch, we'll meet you there', didn't you?"

Face ran the back of his hand across his face to keep the sweat from running into his eyeballs, "Give me a break, Jean, will ya?"

"Now nobody knows we're here," Jean told him, "And nobody's even going to know where to look for us."

"And I suppose that's my fault?" Face asked.

"Let's face it, for Special Forces you certainly have your fair share of moments when you seem to be lacking in intelligence," Jean said as she sat down in one of the folding chairs, "Blonde moments for the blonde."

Face clenched his teeth and his hands and restrained himself, he turned to her and said, "Well I'd like to know why if you hate us so much you're still here."

"Who said anything about all of you? It's just you I can't stand," she replied.

"Oh yeah?" he felt something rising up in his throat and he felt like a mountain lion getting ready to pounce and kill, "Because you think you're so much better than I am, is that it? Well you're not. You're worse than anything I could ever hope to be because you're a murderer!"

That should've been the final straw. In any other person that would've gotten a shocked, perhaps violent reaction. Not Jean. She lightly pressed her feet against the floor and leaned forward in her chair and looked at him.

"You killed in combat, don't try to deny it," Jean said, "They don't give you those medals for holding hands with the Cong soldiers, same as Decker."

Ooh, if ever he had been tempted to knock a woman flat, this was definitely it. "Don't you dare compare me to Decker."

"Why, because he's a Colonel and you're just a Lieutenant?" she asked.

"Because that man is a psychopath, the same as you!" Face told her, "Once we got you back to New York our work involving you was done, was finished! But no, you just had to come back, just had to find us, didn't you? You should've stayed in New York where you belong, with all the rest of the freaks and psychos, then you wouldn't be here messing up our lives. Murdock could do better than you any day of the week, and he deserves better as well. I could come up with 10 different women in the fields of dental assistance, veterinary medicine, even waitresses who would be better suited for him than you are because at least they are civilized and know how to be nice to people! You tricked him into marrying you the first time so he felt obligated to make it official, why don't you just go back to New York and leave him alone?!"

He turned away as soon as the last word came out, and he expected her usual barrage of verbal abuse in response. He was too busy fuming to notice the eerie silence that followed immediately afterward, and then…

A small sound filled the room like a gunshot and it made his blood turn cold.

He turned around to face Jean, who was still seated in the chair, her arms wrapped around herself, her head down, her chin tucked into her chest, her knees raised slightly as if she was trying to curl into a ball and disappear. But the sound was unmistakable, and there it was again. A small choking sound that was trapped in her throat.

Oh no you don't, Face thought to himself, his mind was screaming with the words but for some reason they just wouldn't surface to his mouth: No you don't, you don't get to do that to me, you don't get to heap your abuse on me and then fall apart on me like any other woman. Shut up, shut up! Why now? Why now when you're supposed to be a brick wall that nothing affects, do you have to do this and go to pieces like any regular woman? That's not what you do!

However his anger soon gave way to another feeling that he was more familiar with than he liked to be. His stomach felt like it was tying itself into naval knots and he didn't know what to do. He could honestly say that he felt worse now than he had the time he'd momentarily lost his head and hit Jean, what were the odds? Maybe she hadn't been completely wrong in what she'd said about him and women, but it made him sick to see any woman cry. And perhaps it was harder seeing Jean like this because he knew she never was like this. Irony of all ironies, just when he needed her to be her usual unaffected self that nothing could faze and his insults bounced off of her like tennis balls, the shield came down and she became very normal, and that scared him.

Awkwardly, he walked back over to her and said, trying to come up with the right words, "Ah geez, I'm sorry, Jean…I didn't mean it," he risked putting a hand on her shoulder and when she didn't bite it off he kept it there for leverage and added, "I know you wouldn't do that to Murdock, I know that you two are good for each other."

Jean groaned and grimaced and shook her head and told him, "It's not that…"

"What, then?" he asked, completely and thoroughly confused out of his mind.

A series of small choking whimpering sounds came up from her throat and she explained, "I want to die…my head…"

And then it all clicked.

"How long…" he started to ask.

"About an hour," she managed to get through her clenched teeth.

"Ah geez, I'm sorry, I didn't know," he said.

"Of course you didn't," Jean slowly shook her head, "That's the whole point, nobody knows…if anybody knew how often I really get these migraines, nobody would want me around, not Murdock, not Hannibal, not anyone."

"Haven't you tried those pills for migraines?" Face asked.

"Of course I tried them," she said, "I did it when you all were gone on a job and nobody would have to know if they failed, they did…they didn't work, all they did was make me throw up. I'm stuck like this…if Murdock knew last night…"

"Last night?" Face repeated, "What about last night?"

"After dinner my head started hurting again…and by the time we left the roller rink it felt ready to explode…every place we went to I kept ducking into the bathroom to swallow more pills so he didn't have to know. I couldn't tell him, and ruin our date, when it meant so much to him? Or I thought it did anyway. And then when we were in the car I just kept thinking 'if only I could go to sleep', and I did, and I ruined our date anyway."

And of course, she wouldn't have any pills with her this morning because she wouldn't have figured she'd get headaches back to back like this. Face considered what few options they had right now. They were stuck in a basement with no way out, nobody knew where they were and nobody who did know would even be looking for them for a while. He went over to the boxes on the far wall and opened a few to see if it was emergency supplies if there were any painkillers stashed away. There weren't any, whoever had left this house had left the cellar supplied with jugs of water and canned food and extra clothing and bandages, but no ibuprofen, no Tylenol, not even a damn aspirin. He grabbed Jean by the arm and pulled her to her feet and told her, "Come on, come over here."

He went over to the cot in the middle of the room and sat down on it first to make sure it wouldn't collapse under his own weight, and when it held him, he pulled Jean down to lie on top of him since he figured he'd be a little softer to rest on than this thin sandpaper mattress beneath him. A small groan escaped him as he tried to think how many times this was now that he had either gone to bed with or woken up with his best friend's girl, now how was that for irony? He reached around and patted her under her neck and told her, "Just take it easy, close your eyes, try to get some rest," Jean breathed and let out another small sob and several groaning whimpers. He tried to assure her, "It'll be alright, just calm down, try to sleep." Right now it was the only thing that could be done to help her. But he hoped the others found out where they were soon and got them out of there.

When two hours had passed and there hadn't been any word from Face, Hannibal hadn't been worried; after the earthquake hit and it became three hours, then he knew something was wrong. He called the car phone of the 'Vette' and tried the radio, no answer. He had B.A. check out where the tracking device he'd put in the car just incase of such an emergency, showed up on radar and found they were still on the street for the last house listed. On their way there, they found out that the realtor who was supposed to meet up with them to show them the house had been involved in a two-car collision and after being interviewed at the scene by police, was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries sustained in the crash; ironically a saving grace for them so they could get to the house first and find out what was going on.

They found the 'Vette unattended at the curb of the house that had been on Face's list to check out. They found the door unlocked and showed themselves in and turned the place inside out looking for them. After searching every room on the ground floor and second floor, and all around the yard just to make sure, they found the basement door at the far back of the house, and Hannibal couldn't get it to budge either, so he left it to B.A. who got the door open with one punch.

"Faceman, you down there?" Murdock called as they headed down the stairs single file.

They heard a low grumbling and when they came to the bottom of the stairs they saw Face and Jean asleep on the cot, a sight that on a good day would be shocking in and of itself. Hannibal was the first to make his way over to them and at first glance it didn't look like either of them had been injured during the quake, he reached down and shook Face's shoulder to rouse him.

"Face, you alright?" he asked.

One eye opened, and then shut again, and then they both opened up, and as he tried to figure out where he was and what was going on, the first coherent words out of his mouth were, "Head, her head…"

"Something fall on her?" Hannibal asked.

"No," Face said in a strained voice as he started to come around, "No, just another migraine."

"B.A.," Hannibal said, "Get her out of here."

"Right, Hannibal," B.A. came over to them and carefully lifted Jean up off of Face and carried her up the stairs.

"You alright, Faceman?" Murdock asked as he and Hannibal helped him to his feet.

"Uh…" he thought about it, "Yeah…" Physically anyway. But he knew he'd have a lifetime to remember what he'd said in the heat of the moment, and he prayed that the near hysterical pain Jean had suffered blocked the memories from her own mind. They were by no means on the closest terms with one another, but he knew the they'd both willingly take a bullet for the other, and that was what mattered.

"Well what do you think, Face?" Hannibal asked, "Will this house suffice?"

"Well," he thought about it, "There're five bedrooms, two and a half baths…and if anybody tries breaking in we can just lock them in the basement and they'll never get out…I think it could be a keeper."

"Fine," Hannibal said, "Then let's get to the hospital and tell the realtor that we'll take it."

"The hospital?" Face repeated.

"Sure, and while we're there you can work your little magic to get something strong for Jean's head," he replied.

While B.A. waited for the others to come out, he got Jean settled in the backseat of the van and found the first aid kit they kept on hand and dug out a bottle of painkillers and got her to swallow a couple. She didn't say much, just grumbled and murmured something incoherent.

"How ya doing, mama?" he asked, pressing a thumb against the corner of her eyelid to force it open a bit.

She looked at him through one eye and grumbled something else, then closed her eye and slumped her head down.

"How's she doing, Big Guy?" Murdock asked as he jumped over the porch steps and made his way back to the van.

"Not good, fool," B.A. answered.

Face was right behind Murdock, and he got past the Captain and was the first one to the van to see for himself. He leaned in for a minute and asked her, "How're you doing, Jean?"

She got out a low moan and said, never opening her eyes, "Shoot me…just shoot me."

Grim though it was, he knew her well enough to know that that was an improvement. Before he went back to the 'Vette though, he had to ask her, "What do you remember, Jean?"

"Hmmm?" she forced her eyes open this time and looked at him and said, "Remember?"

"When we were in the basement, do you remember?" he asked.

"Remember…remember…I remember…the earthquake…then being carried out here…"

Face let out a small but heavy sigh of relief, she didn't remember, and hopefully she wouldn't.

"Alright, let's get out of here," Hannibal said as he brought up the rear, "Next stop, the hospital."

"Hospital?" Jean parroted.

"Yeah, didn't you hear?" he asked her, "We're taking the house."

Murdock climbed in alongside Jean and lightly squeezed her hand, "Don't you worry, hon, we're gonna stop off at the hospital and pick up some high power meds and get you fixed right up, I give you my word as a mental patient."

B.A. looked at them in the rear view mirror and asked, "Hey Murdock, you trying to scare her or something?"

Jean groaned as she leaned to the side and pressed her face against Murdock's jacket to block out the light. Hannibal got in the front with B.A. and Face went back to his own car to follow after them.

"Alright, B.A.," Hannibal said, "Let's roll out."